Let’s be clear, here:  “Public Art” is to art what “public restroom” is to rest.  I’m at a loss to think of any publicly-supported “art” that advances “art” in any way.  It could exist – my art trivia-fu isn’t the same as my music-fu – but it’s not leaping to mind.

I think public subsidy of art is a bad thing, both as government fiscal management and as art.

So when the idea of the “Legacy” amendment – diverting part of a one percent sales tax to the arts as well as natural resources – came up, I was skeptical.

But I thought “as long as the money goes to art education, it’d be the lesser of the possible evils”.  Art education is sorely neglected in our society; having some appreciation for art in its many forms is one of the things that adds depth and color to life, and it doesn’t matter if that art is a trip through the Minnesota Museum of Art or a little music or the occasional play (from the Ordway to some waaaaay-off-Nicollet startup house) to a good book.  Music – along with foreign languages – was one of the few things that kept me engaged with the idea of “education” at all during those miserable years from seventh through tenth grades; I’m hardly alone.

So if you have to spend money on “arts”, for the love of pete, spend it on bringing art in its various forms to schools and community centers and kids who, in our society, just don’t get exposed to much of it at all.

So how much could we have done for $45,000?

A Stillwater library paid that much in Legacy funds to bring in Sci-Fi author Neil Gaiman.   And Rep. Matt Dean was unhappy about it, and called Gaiman a “pencil-necked weasel”, which got Sci-fi nerds and GOP-haters all up with the victorian vapours:

(“Um, hullo? It’s “SF”, not “Sci Fy”.  Doy.  And don’t call me a “Trekkie”.  It’s Trekker, thank you very much”  There.  I wrote it so you don’t have to).

The feud between celebrity author Neil Gaiman and House Majority Leader Matt Dean took several bizarre twists Thursday, when lawmakers threatened retaliation against local libraries, Gaiman threatened retaliation against Dean, and the cast of characters expanded to include Snooki from MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”

Neil Gaiman, starving artist.

The action started when a House Republican committee chair said he is recommending a $45,000 cut in the Twin Cites’ regional library system budget to make up for the state Legacy money it paid last year to Gaiman for a speaking appearance.

Gaiman quickly defended his speaking fees, saying they are comparable to those charged by Snooki, the reality TV star.

And to be fair to Gaiman, if taxpayer money had gone to “Snooki”, I’d be even more irate.

“I won the Newbery Medal. I won the Carnegie Medal,” said Gaiman, who said he has 1.5 million Twitter followers. “I’ve written movies that were the Number 1 movie in the entire world.”

Well, that’s great.  Kudos.

You, Mr. Gaiman, are someone who has been rewarded bountifully for your talents.  I don’t begrudge a nickel of what you’ve earned…

…from the private sector.

But can anyone say, honestly, that $45,000 expropriated from all of us working schlubs for “arts and culture” is better spent on allowing locals to bask in the presence of a millionaire sci-fi writer than on, say, buying rental band instruments for a high school music program?  For keeping an after-school art program open?  For anything else?

Dean, R-Dellwood, got things rolling Tuesday by calling Gaiman a “pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota,” has since apologized. He said Thursday he did not direct Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, who chairs the House Legacy Funding Division committee, to trim $45,000 from the regional library system’s proposed budget.

Dean’ comments, however, underscored the ongoing concerns of the Republican majority about Legacy money being spent on arts and cultural projects as the Legislature struggles to solve a $5.1 billion budget deficit.

Concerns?

Try outrage.  As someone who supports the arts, I’m stupefied at the tone-deafness of the library’s action.

Although my inner cynic isn’t surprised (I’ll be adding some emphasis):

The Legacy amendment, passed in 2008 with considerable financial support from arts groups in Minnesota, raised the state sales tax for 25 years to fund outdoors, clean water, parks and trails and arts and cultural heritage projects.

And when Republicans point to things like…:

• …the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities and their racket of funding arrogant avant-garde art while school arts programs go begging
• …the millions in annual funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which enforces a rigid political agenda on its own governance…

…as evidence that the public art funding bureaucracy is out of control, and the arts and culture advocacy communities are fighting against a legislative majority committed to cutting government waste, really, it seems it’s more than just arts education that’s lacking.

Gaiman is a successful “artist”, and a pretty wealthy guy:

Gaiman, reached Thursday afternoon, said he found the entire episode “very weird” and said he could win court damages from Dean, the leading Republican in the Minnesota House, should he choose to do so.

“If I actually wanted to come after you, dude, I could,” Gaiman said of

[For what?  Defamation?  Buncombe.  Dean made no factual assertions; he stated an opinion.  The opinion isn’t going to harm Gaiman’s standing in his community or his livelihood; it’ll likely do quite the opposite.  And malice?  Gaiman must be a sci-fi writer – Ed]

Gaiman said he would not file a lawsuit, but was considering other options that would be “so much more fun than going legal.”

There’ll be a Klingon character named “Deangrfx” in his next book, I’ll bet.  Socially-maladjusted twentysomething computer geeks will titter with glee.  Life will go on.

Gaiman also maintained that he received $33,600 for the four-hour appearance — a booking agency received the remainder — and said other appearances, outside Minnesota, have paid him more than $60,000.

And if they were paid for with tax money, then we really need to talk.

Anyway, fine – Gaiman’s not a pencil-necked weasel.

He’s just an unconscionable waste of tax money.

How many writing programs, or art teachers, or after-school music programs, could we have supported for what we wasted on this narcissistic frippery?

Since the left’s been jumping up and down about the low turnout at the Tea Party rally (on a windy, freezing day in an off year after an epic conservative victory) I figured it’d be fun to show a really dead movement.

This is the last “Million Mom March” event in Minneapolis a few years back:

More camera people than “Moms”.

Now that’s a dead movement.

The office of the effort to recall one of the Fleebaggers has been burgled (emphasis added):

Green Bay police are investigating an apparent break-in at the office of the “Recall Dave Hansen”effort at 1136 W. Mason St.

Petitions, a computer and T-shirts were among the items reported stolen, police said.

I know that when I’m looking to score crack money, nothing draws my eye like page after page of signatures.

The Democratic state senator is among the lawmakers being targeted in recall efforts stemming from Wisconsin’s ongoing budget controversy.

The burglar or burglars broke a window to make entry, police said. The incident occurred between 5 p.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. Friday, police Lt. David Paral said.

Organizers of the effort, in an email to media, blamed the break-in on “the (opposition) of ‘Recall Dave Hansen.'” Police said they did not have descriptions of suspects.

Total value of the missing items is slightly more than $1,000, Paral said.

Or, depending on how you view Wisconsin politics, several billion dollars.

Of course, we don’t know it was Wisconsin Democrats or Union supporters that pulled off the heist.

Really.  It could be a crack addict who figured she could pawn stacks of signatures.  Maybe she thought they were Packer autographs.

Hey, it could be.

The weekend after Tuan Pham’s application for a variance for his statue of Jesus was rejected by the city, vandals build and light a big fire around of his statues:

A 7-foot Jesus statue in Tuan Pham’s back yard and at the heart of a zoning dispute was damaged by fire Sunday morning.

Pham and his wife, Mai, awoke for an early church service to see a blaze enveloping the marble statue Pham had imported and erected in his prayer garden beside the Mississippi River bluff. A pile of nail-studded wood had been stacked around the statue’s base and lit on fire.

Welcome to America…

Pham, 75, put on a coat, ran outside and tried to move the burning 2-by-4s away from his beloved statue. A daughter called police, comforted her mother and began snapping photos.

The incident has left the family distraught but more determined to keep the statue in its current spot — one that the St. Paul City Council says is closer to the edge of the bluff than city rules permit.

“God never gave up,” Pham said. “So I follow him.”

“It’s a sign,” said Pham’s daughter, Sylvie Phan. “God wants his name to be known.”

It’s a sign, all right – of lots of things.

On top of what the Phams have seen, it’s a sign of what life is like for anyone who bucks the status quo in Saint Paul.  From a St. Paul community forum:

The fire that was set was quite large, but could not destroy his statue, so the arsonists decided to trash some of the other statuary in the yard.

The police were called, of course, but refused to investigate. Tuan was told to come to the station on Monday and fill out a report…arson and hate crime, not a big deal in St. Paul, I guess.

The statue is 3′ INSIDE the yard fence, but evidently Bucky Thune (who was named by Mr. Pham as a lead antagonist) found an ordinance that would force the Phams to move the statue 2’…two fucking feet.

That means the entire grotto would have to be dismantled, which of course is the goal.

Looking up and down the bluff, one can see sheds, swing sets and all manner of constructions closer to the bluff than Tuan’s statue. But Christ has gotta go.

Look – we don’t know who set the fire.

But I would feel comfortable betting money it’ll end up being some hanger-on from the Twin Cities left.

The voters of Wisconsin have spoken.

Even after two months of gnashing and thrashing and sniveling, The People of Wisconsin have reaffirmed last November’s results.

After the media and left (pardon my redundancy) all but declared it a Kloppenberg victory and referendum on Walker.

And it just goes to show the media – just because liberals swarm in Madison doesn’t mean an entire state has drunk the koolaid.

You’ve heard the news: corrected tallies put Prosser on top after a 7,500-vote swing.

Naturally, the Democrats are upset.  It’s almost folklore; only Democrats benefit from mysterious and opaque swings in votes!

Kloppenburg supporters reacted with alarm, pointing out that Nickolaus had worked in the Assembly Republican caucus during the time that Prosser, a former Republican lawmaker, served as the Assembly speaker and that Nickolaus also had faced questions about her handling of elections as clerk.

In the liberal world, a public servant’s work in public service is “experience” for Democrats, and “evidence” against Republicans.

And show me a public servant that hasn’t “faced questions”.

“Wisconsin voters as well as the Kloppenburg (campaign) deserve a full explanation of how and why these 14,000 votes from an entire city were missed. To that end, we will be filing open records requests for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the county,” Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said in a statement.

Yeah, Ms. Mulliken!

And while you’re at it, let’s get answers about all the irregularities in Hennepin County!

Oh, wait…

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) raised the possibility of an independent investigation over the recovery of the votes.

“This is a serious breach of election procedure,” he said. “We’re going to look further. She waited 24 hours to work this. And she waited until after she verified the results, making it that much more difficult to challenge and verify the results.”

‘We went over everything’

I suppose Wisconsin Voters should be happy Barca didn’t make his announcement from a hotel in Chicago.

Of course, not every Wisconsin Dem is chanting the party line.  I’m adding some emphasis:

But at the news conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, said: “We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up, and we’re satisfied they’re correct.”

As a Democrat, she said, “I’m not going to stand here and tell you something that’s not true.”

Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, who sat in on Nickolaus’ news conference, said voters can be confident in the results because “all the votes are in that office. If anyone wants to look at them and verify, they can.”

This is a great day for America.

As the GOP in the Minnesota Legislature drives toward a budget – and does it a solid month earlier than the Democrats managed it in the past session – the Dems’ latest chanting point is that “the budget doesn’t’ agree with the fiscal notes!”

And it sounds pretty serious…

…oh, who am I kidding.  As much as I’ve followed politics over the years, as of yesterday I had absolutely no idea what a “fiscal note” was.

The Bad News:  The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is very, very close, and may  be headed for a recount.

But conservative candidate David Prosser is currently leading extremist whackdoodle liberal JoAnne Kloppenberg by a razor-thin margin…

…that might be headed for a recount, and thence to lawsuits with all sorts of union-paid lawyers that wind up in front of the very court for whom the elections are being held. Which is deadlocked.

But even with 99% of the vote counted, fewer than 600 votes – about 0.04% of ballots – separated the candidates. And The Associated Press said early Wednesday that the race was too close to call and that it would take hours or most of the day to get a final tally.

That close margin had political insiders from both sides talking about the possibility of a recount, which Wisconsin has avoided in statewide races in recent decades. Any recount could be followed by lawsuits – litigation that potentially would be decided by the high court.

The good news?  The election – held as Wisconsin is still up in arms (almost literally) over the collective bargaining squabble – shows on a statewide level that the Dems’ much-ballyhooed recall effort is likely, for the most part, to squib.

It’s the Minnesota left (and RINO-right)’s favorite club-over-the-head line; “if we don’t [fill in the desired spending proposal], the Twin Cities will become a cold Omaha”.

It’s kind of funny, really, since Omaha is thriving these days.

Steve Berg at the MinnPost takes a whack at analyzing the census data – and doesn’t like what he (and, more to the point, his various sources) see:

At first glance, the 2010 Census results seem satisfying and unremarkable. Only upon further review do they reveal unbalanced patterns of growth and wealth that spell trouble for Minneapolis-St. Paul as the metro economy tries to regain momentum.

The official count placed MSP’s 13-county metro population at 3,278,833, up 10.4 percent from a decade ago. That was enough for the Twin Cities to retain its rank as the nation’s 16th largest metro market. While the region grew 40 percent slower than during the go-go ’90s, it still outpaced the 9.7 percent national rate, and it grew faster than all other Midwestern and Northeastern metros in the top 20.

So far, so good.

But there’s “bad” news – or, as Republicans would see it, “reality” and “a changing market” – along with it:

How the region grew should deeply trouble Minnesota’s political, business and civic leaders. Virtually all growth was on the suburban edge, while the central cities and most inner suburbs lost both population and relative wealth. Not only did the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul fail to gain population, they are now fully 30 percent poorer than the metro region as a whole.

The important questions, of course, are “why?” and “what do we do about it?”

And the answers to both – at least as presented by Berg (no relation) are heavily dependent on ideology.

The Twin Cities metro is at a crossroads.  The suburbs – especially the commerce-heavy south and chock-full-of-business west – are thriving.  The latest census shows the Third and Sixth Congressional districts are booming, while Minneapolis and Saint Paul are stagnant at best – which is good news politically, as the DFL strangleholds on both congressional districts will be diluted, but bad news economically, as the urban areas require more and more life support from the parts of the state that actually work.

So what are the signs?  Is there hope?  Will Minneapolis and Saint Paul bounce back?  Or are they destined to become a cold Flint Michigan?

If you read Berg’s article – drawn from the state’s “urban planning” intelligentsia…:

That’s not a healthy trend. Unless a more balanced growth pattern emerges, one that also includes the metro area’s inner districts, and unless prosperity is shared more broadly, the MSP region will lag behind in competing for the young talent and high-quality jobs needed to keep pace as the economy recovers.

…the signs aren’t good.

More Monday.

Liberal Wisconsin judge hijacks the rule of law, and then tells lawyers not to criticize her for it:

Before wrapping up a brief hearing Wednesday, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi offered a word of caution to attorneys involved in high-profile lawsuits over collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

Sumi said emotions are running high over two cases she is hearing regarding Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to eliminate most collective bargaining for public workers. That “spirited debate” is important in a democracy, but attorneys must keep in mind their professional ethics, Sumi said.

“They all have a responsibility to promote and not denigrate the judicial branch and, more importantly, the rule of law,” she said.

This is like Rep. John Lesch saying Republicans are “crapping on the flag” for criticizing him.

“Judge” Sumi: you, and especially your decision, are not “the judicial branch and the rule of law!”

She advised lawyers to review state Supreme Court rules that say: “A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge….”

She referred to public comments made by attorneys after a Tuesday hearing, but did not elaborate.

It’s the “when did you stop beating your wife” defense.

Joe Doakes of Como Park in St. Paul – a government worker, by the way – sent me an email:

This is an excellent article.

It’s a link to a John Tevlin piece in the Strib.  We’ll come back to that.

It was sent to me by another government employee. Some government employees feel as if budget cutters are attacking the employees on the grounds of worth, as in “you’re not worth what we’re paying you.” That’s off-putting to them, their families, to mushy-middle types.

It’s a good point.  It’s a bit of messaging that conservatives should mind – because you know that the left and media (pardon the redundancy) will exaggerate it for their own purposes.

Which is a great segue into Tevlin (we’ll  come back to Joe’s point in just a moment, here).  Tevlin’s a lower-budget Nick Coleman; he uses the death of a county worker last week in the flooding in southwest Minnesota…:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker never met Mike Struck. Nor have most of the politicians who are demonizing public employees in order to advance their own careers and agendas.

…as a rhetorical cudgel in a “public versus private employees” battle that serves the DFL juuuust fine:

Some legislators like to portray anyone who has a government job as lazy, incompetent and overcompensated.

(Just as some columnists like to portray any criticism of big government as an attack on all government workers , which is itself lazy and overcompensation.  Just saying).

It’s too bad they didn’t know Struck, because it’s important to remember that for every construction worker you see leaning on a shovel, for every nonchalant clerk at City Hall, there are many guys like Mike Struck, who showed up every day, worked his butt off, made your roads safer and cleaner, and ultimately gave his life doing his job.

And he did it all for $44,000 a year.

Clearly we need more Mike Strucks in Saint Paul…

…but that’s an unhelpful digression – for reasons I’ll explain later.

Struck, 39, was killed this week when his backhoe flipped over and fell into a creek at Seven Mile Creek Park, between St. Peter and Mankato, not far from his home town of Cleveland. He was part of a frantic attempt by Minnesota Department of Transportation workers to prevent flooding in southern Minnesota ahead of the melting snow.

“He was cleaning debris from a culvert to prevent flooding,” said Rebecca Arndt, a regional spokeswoman for MnDOT. Trying to protect his neighbors from harm and damage to their property?

“Yes, that’s exactly what he was doing,” she said.

According to his friends, Struck was the ultimate public servant.

“He loved his job,” said Wade Adams, a friend and co-worker. “I would swear he drank two Red Bulls before he came to work every day, he had so much energy. Whatever you needed to do, change a cutting edge or a flat tire, Mike was always the first one to be there to help. He was a very hard worker, and he was proud of his job.”

It’s a tragedy that Struck died.

But what we have here is a case of offsettling “rhetorical laziness” penalties.

Plenty of public sector workers work very hard, and deliver great results.  My father – a teacher for something like 40  years, and a very good one – was certainly one of them.  Ditto my  mother’s parents – my grandma, who taught her whole career, and my grandfather, who taught for a couple decades before he left the profession to sell drugs [1].

We all know public-sector workers who do good work – firefighters and paramedics and cops, of course, but also teachers and public works people and yes, even bureaucrats in areas that much of society would struggle to call “essential government services” or, more to the point, “services that government, rather than the private sector, should provide”.

So it’s lazy, self-indulgent and ethically cowardly to say “all public workers are a waste”…

…just as it is to day “questioning government spending is spitting on Mike Struck’s grave”.

Which, alas, is Tevlin’s M.O.   That, and pointless politicizing of tragedy:

That’s why the current backlash against public workers riles them now.

“I get so fed up with people who think we have cushy jobs,” said Lillie. “Mike was disgusted by it because people don’t understand what we go through, what we give up. One of my friends said, ‘Your job sucks, you’re on call 24/7.’ That’s right.”

For $44,000.

And there’s John Tevlin’s rhetorical laziness at work.

Clearly Mike Struck’s life was worth vastly more than $44K, even including the pension.

You could ask whether Mike Struck made the same kind of money a private-sector heavy equipment operator/construction worker/handyman would make $44K, or whether that private sector worker should be compelled to work until he’s 70 so that Struck and his colleagues can retire at 55, ,or whether his job might not have been a better value had it been outsourced (or not)…

…but both of those dodge the real issue.

The real issue is not whether public sector workers, as individuals, or even as a class, are or are not overpaid, a great value, lazy, diligent or good human beings.

The real issues are “at a time when we, the private sector taxpayers, are suffering, is it our obligation to sacrifice disproportionally to insulate the public sector from any inconvenience?“, and “can some of government’s jobs be done better outside the public sector – or not at all?”

Naturally, it’s more convenient for Tevlin, and better advances the DFL, to advance the chanting point that “questionintg government” equals “attacking government workers”, along with shutting down schools and making grandma eat dog food.

Doakes:

A better message might be “you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing for the government, you should be doing it for private industry.”

And “given all the talk of “community” that the public sector pushes to justify its existence, shouldn’t the public sector – with no malice intended against public workers – be expected to share in some of the sacrifice we in the private sector, who pay their bills, are?

(PS:  By the way, I’m with Tevlin on this part:

Note: Mike Struck’s colleagues have started a fund to educate his children. Make checks payable to Mike Struck Memorial Fund, c/o Nicollet County Bank, 220 S. 3rd St., St. Peter, MN 56082.

If you can…

(more…)

…that if we voted Republican, freedom of the press would suffer.

And they were right:

Staffers with Vice President Joe Biden confined an ORLANDO SENTINEL reporter in a closet this week to keep him from mingling with high-powered guests gathered for a Dem fundraiser.

Reporter Scott Powers was the designated “pool reporter” for the vice president’s Wednesday visit to the massive Winter Park, Fla., home of developer and philanthropist Alan Ginsburg. The veep hadn’t arrived yet but most of the 150 guests (minimum $500 donation) had. They were busy noshing on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese and bacon deviled eggs, before a lunch of grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps.

Not so for Powers. A “low-level staffer” put Powers in a storage closet and then stood guard outside the door, Powers told the DRUDGE REPORT. “When I’d stick my head out, they’d say, ‘Not yet. We’ll let you know when you can come out.'”

And no crustini for Powers, either. He made do with a bottle of water to sip as he sat at a tiny makeshift desk, right next to a bag marked “consignment.” Powers was closeted at about 11:30 a.m., held for about an hour and 15 minutes, came out for 35 minutes of remarks by Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, and then returned to his jail for the remainder of the event.

I’m trying to remember any events during the “autocratic” Bush/Cheney years where reporters were corralled into closets.

Gotta say, I got nothing.

Powers’ phone didn’t work in the closet, but his Blackberry did, so he fired a picture of his impromptu prison to his editors, who posted a short blog item on the lack of freedom of the press under the veep’s control.

Via Drudge

Powers didn’t mention his confinement in either of his pool reports that day, saying only that “press coverage was limited to a single pool reporter, filing on behalf of all local media, who was allowed to listen to the remarks but not given an opportunity to talk with anyone at the event.”

Gotta break some eggs to make that omelet, I guess.

“Let me please indroduce myself,
I’m Janet, from HHS.
I’ve been around for about two years
The One called, and I said “yes””.

“I was around when Tim McVeigh
had his moment of spotlight.
And all you middle-class conservatives
are what keep me up at night…”

The [counter terror disaster] exercise scenario describes shootings occurring after rising tensions in the community because of an influx of minorities, Reed said. The newcomers, some who are American citizens and some who are illegal immigrants, were to have moved into a rural area from urban areas in search of more-affordable living. The newcomers are not welcomed by racial extremists, and controversy sweeps the community, he said.

“I am in charge of keeping you safe
that is what I’m supposed to do.
So you shouted out “who are the terrorists?”
when after all, it’s  you and… you:”

One of the fictional suspects involved in the shootings is described an 18-year-old white male with a quick-tempered father who is a firearms enthusiast with ties to an underground white supremacy group. A second fictional suspect is described as an isolated 17-year-old white male student who was befriended by the older student and who mimics his new friend.

“Pleased to meet you.  Hope you guessed my name”.

Wisconsin investigators announced on Friday that they’d figured out who sent the really really stupid death threats to Wisconsin’s GOP senators:

On the day Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed his Budget Repair Bill into law, authorities announced they had identified the sender of emails that threatened to kill the Governor and Republican members of the State Senate who supported the proposal.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation and the Wisconsin Capitol Police say they have investigated numerous threats against elected officials over the last four weeks. Thursday Night, the Division of Criminal Investigation identified and located a subject suspected of sending at least two of those threats.

“The Division of Criminal Investigation takes these kind of threats seriously and will follow through with the investigation and prosecution whenever possible,” DCI Administrator Ed Wall said.

Upon questioning, the suspect subsequently admitted to authoring and sending two e-mails threatening to kill the Governor and members of the Senate.

And that suspect has reportedly confessed

News that the state Justice Department has identified one suspect in connection with death threats sent to Republican state senators comes as at least a minor relief to Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend).

“They caught someone? Good,” he said Friday night. “I am waiting to hear the background of the type of person who would do such a devious thing.”

Back in college, when I was still a liberal, I was involved in the elections for the leadership of the Young Progressives.

I campaigned in favor of Rebekah Zildjian-Grothman.  Her opponent, Joshua-Micah Belcher, got wind of this.

“Mitch – don’t drop out of college if I win!”, he said at a meeting.

“I had no plans to”.   It seemed simple enough.

Oddly enough, all his posters had fine print at the bottom; I was standing by the bulletin board outside the cafeteria when Angie Schlegel pointed it out;  “I disclaim responsibility if Mitch Berg drops out of college shoul I happen to win”.

Angie looked at me, concerned; I shrugged my shoulders.  “I have no idea what he’s talking about”, I said, baffled.

The election happened.  Joshua – excuse me, Joshua-Micah – won.  As he gave his acceptance speech, he looked at me.  “And now, we’re going to watch Mitch Berg kill himself!”.  He reached into his pocket and handed me a “Withdraw From College” form.

“Huh?”

“You were going to drop out of college if I won!”

I threw the form back at him.  “That was a story you made up…” I started.

“Don’t change the subject!”, he bellowed.

———-

The DFL’s current “tactic” (scare quotes fully intentional) is, if anything, dumber than my fictional story above.

Let’s walk through the facts:

1. While setting up the 2010-2011 budget back in 2009, the DFL-dominated legislature, using the auto-pilot formula they use for these things, forecast a budget of almost $39 billion.  The increase – 21%, overall – was predicated on inflation (relatively low) and putative increase in demand for services.  The forecast was nothing more than the DFL’s wish list. it was focused entirely – 100% – on forecast increases in demand and price.  Nothing more.
2. The leadership of the then-DFL-controlled legislature subtracted the then-forecast revenues – around $32 billion – from the forecast, and declared that there would be a “$6.2 billion deficit”, primarily to put pressure on then-governor Tim Pawlenty.
3. The GOP – first during the Emmer campaign, and then after the November elections – declared that they could do a budget that would live within what were forecast to be government’s means; as of 2009, that was $32 billion.
4. During the 2010 Governor race, Mark Dayton made it clear that he was going to treat the $39 billion forecast as the gospel for the budget.
5. In response, Tom Emmer made it clear he and the GOP would not raise taxes, but force government to live within its means (and reform the system to help that happen.
6. Once it became clear that revenues were going to rise.  Tom Emmer made it a key part of his campaign; “living within our means” meant $33 or $34 billion.  Not $32 billion.
7. Emmer lost – but the MNGOP swept to commanding majorities in both chambers of the legislature.
8. The new GOP majorities made it clear that they were not going to raise taxes; that living within our means, and reforming our government and tax systems to make that possible were the orders of the day.
9. Time marched on.
10. Mark Dayton released his budget – which was greeted with all the enthusiasm of Vanilla Ice’s sophomore album.  Last week, Dayton had make a grand show of telling the DFL not to vote for his budget when the GOP brought it to the floor – to cover the fact that nobody was going to anyway.

At this point, the DFL knew what was coming; that the revenue forecast was going to show exactly what Emmer predicted, that government’s “means” were going to grow to $34 billion, and the GOP was going to use that fact.

And so they started perhaps the most cynical, transparently-desperate political memes I can remember – worse than my ol’ buddy Joshua-Micah’s, from so many years back:

The GOP’s all-cuts budget is late!  And if it’s not all cuts, then they’ve failed!

Put concisely, it was “the party that released all-tax-hike budgets in mid-April the past four years wants you get outraged that the GOP is releasing a balanced, no-tax-hike budget in March”.

The GOP released its budget last week – a budget that lives within government’s means – those means being $34 billion in revenue.  And the DFL’s chant-bots have been trying to cash that meme in.

House Minority leader Paul Thissen launched a broadside on the House DFL caucus Facebook page:

Apparently, “living within our means” is not as easy as the Republicans made it seem to Minnesotans on the campaign trail. Republicans promised Minnesotans that $32 billion was more than enough to balance the budget and that it could be done holding school children, seniors, and the disabled harmless.

And Thissen is lying.  The GOP never said “government’s means” was $32 billion, now and forever.

Today’s release of Republican budget targets proves that the magic act Republicans promised Minnesotans is running into hard reality. The $32 billion that was enough a week ago is now more than $34.

Thissen, and the DFL’s, plan is pretty transparent.  With a weak governor, no legislative power, and a $39 billion wish list, they are trying to convince Tea Partiers – including the moderate DFLers that deserted the party last fall – that the GOP, the party of no tax hikes and the $34 billion budget, are the spendthrifts.

This is the hallmark of a party that is desperate for a win – and fully confident that the media will not seriously question them about such a transparent bit of spin.

As a result, middle-class Minnesota taxpayers should start guarding their wallets against a Republican pick-pocket budget characterized by hidden taxes.

That’s another oldie but goodie, a very cynical bit of carefully-waterboarded context; “if the government cuts LGA, it will hike property taxes”.  That is, of course, the job of the local governments involved.  It has nothing to do with the legislature.

And hard-working Minnesotans should also guard their jobs. We know that the Republican budget will do more harm to Minnesota’s fragile economic recovery than a balanced approach. Cutting nearly 50% of Jobs and Economic Development, raising property taxes – the largest tax businesses pay already, and slashing the workforce are a recipe for job killing, not job creation.

Another bit of cynical distortion; the “Jobs and Economic Development” spending creates very few jobs and very little economic development, for the money we’ve poured into it.

Republicans heralded $300 million in new tax cuts for middle and lower income earners.

And that is a lie.  The “new taxes” will come from city councils, who can no longer camouflage their own spending by having state taxpayers subsidize it for the.  And as we showed last year, those city councils are run by DFLers.

Playing poker with a pair of deuces, Thissen is passing on the most transparently cynical set of chanting points I can recall in all my years of watching Minnessota politcs.  Thissen can get away with these statements – lies, grossly-waterboarded context – because he knows the mainstream media statewide won’t disturb his narrative.

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring responded as well;  you should read the whole thing.  Money quote:

I’ll just be blunt. Rep. Thissen isn’t an impressive leader. His credibility doesn’t exist because his constant sky-is-falling predictions aren’t believable. People might or might not agree with the Republicans’ plan. I suspect more do than don’t because that’s how they voted in November and because people understand that spending $34 billion is substantially more than spending $30.7 billion.

Gary’s right.

Worst case?  That’s what the DFL is counting on; the idea that there are enough Tea Partiers who will see “Two Billion more in spending”, and ignore the “that’s what we have”.

Years ago, I heard a great cliche while I was playing poker. That cliche applies to this situation. Sometimes, the best way to throw a hand is away. The DFL’s hand is awful. Their plans aren’t that appealing. It’s time for the DFL to admit that it’s time to throw this hand away and return to the proverbial drawing board. They won’t win this hand with the hand they’re playing.

I wish I could be as sanguine as Gary.  The DFL is counting on there being a majority of the population that pays no attention beyond the chanting points they and their compliant media present for them.  The last election showed he’s a little over 43% right.

The message, if it comes up at the water cooler?  The GOP budget lives within the state’s means, without needing to jack up taxes to do it.  There are hikes, there are cuts – but it’s a sane, sensible budget for tough times.

Thissen, like my old pal Joshua-Micah Belcher, thinks if he can deny it often and loudly enough, people will believe it.

NOTE: I know, I know – neither my college friends Zildjian-Grothman nor Belcher actually existed.

Someone in Wisconsin (presumably) has an active fantasy life:

The State Department of Justice confirms that it is investigating several death threats against a number of lawmakers in response to the legislature’s move to strip employees of many collective bargaining rights.

Among the threats the Justice Department is investigationg is one that was emailed to Republican Senators Wednesday night. Newsradio 620 WTMJ has obtained that email.

The following is the unedited email:

———-

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.

We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.

This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

Well, isn’t that special?

Ed and I have had enough of the Fleebaggers.

Last Saturday, we took the entire catalog of Western popular music hostage – and we promised to kill a different song every week until the Fleebaggers returned to Madison, and stopped holding Democracy itself hostage.

And we meant it.

A week ago, we assaulted Tom Petty’s legacy with “Fleebaggin”.

Last Saturday, it was “Dems On The Run”, making John Lennon roll over in his grave out of sympathy for Macca.

And this Saturday?

“Lawyers, Cheese and Bratwurst”.

My decision over the past holiday season to put off doing my “logic for leftybloggers” series – explaining some of the basic points of a logical argument, since a so very, very infinitesimally tiny share of them can actually manage one – is looking more and more shortsighted every day.

I may have to exhume the entire series from the trash can.

Today’s example:  Rob Levine, one of Kackel Dackel’s minions over at Cucking Stool.  Last week he wrote to regurgitate some of EdMinn’s carefully-selected chanting points over charter schools.  I responded.

That was probably my first mistake.

Over the weekend, he “responded“.  To the extent that name-calling and nothing more is a “response”, anyway.

I’ve been writing about charter schools for years. I’ve made a habit of field-dressing the various chanting points the anti-charter lobby – EdMinn and their various sock-puppet suipport groups, MN2020, the DFL and its’ pet alt-media – places out there.  I’ve seen it all.  And I’ve gotten all the usual responses; charter schools are for the 2010s what the Second Amendment was to the 1990s; the focus of a lot of disinformation, half-informed debate, politically-manipulated emotion, and just plain not-too-bright name-calling.

The mantra of education deformers…

“Deformers”.  Cute.

OK, he’s a leftyblogger; you have to handicap him a little name-calling, anyway.  If you read his piece (enh), you’ll see he’s not bashful about using it.

Well, that and the last refuge of weak debater, the “first person omnisicient”, “Karnak the Magnificent” school of reporting:

…is to find “what works” and replicate it. They are fixated on numbers and statistics about “education gaps,” “value-added measures,” test scores, and closing “low performing” schools.

Rob Levine thinks we – a good chunk of the 13% of Saint Paul parents who’ve left the system, and of the 25% in Minneapolis, the hundreds of thousands nationwide, and especially the thousands of Afro-American, H’mong and Latino families, the steep majority of charter parents in Saint Paul and Minneapolis – are “fixated” on Department of Ed statistics.

It’s pretty much crut, of course.  We – the Twin Cities’ overwhelmingly minority, disproportionally poor, but lopsidedly motivated parents who are the charter schools’ most devoted advocates – are there because our kids were getting an inadequate education in the public schools and we wanted better.  We exercised the thing that EdMinn and the rest of the status quorriors fear the most; our free, enlightened choice.

Now, why do you think we not only leave the public system, but stay in the charter system, devoting time, money, effort and our kids’ precious futures?

According to Levine, it’s apparently because we’re idiots.

We’ll come back to that, too.  First, let’s see if his debate technique improved since the last paragraph:

But what to do when the numbers don’t go their way? Honest advocates might admit their rhetorical opponents have a point and go from there. Mitch Berg has a different idea: distract with sophistry and denial and hope nobody notices that he’s made a fool of himself.

Levine, our “honest advocate”, apparently hasn’t gotten the memo; the “MITCH BERG HAS TEH SCR3AMING MELTDOWN OVER MY L33T CHARTER SCHOOL POST!” is so 2007, even among the smart leftybloggers.

Believing that endless repetition is the source of wisdom, he re-re-regurgitates his first post, again:

Case in point: Almost a year ago I cataloged the lengthening list of charter schools that have crashed and burned in Minnesota. I didn’t have to do much research for the post – the Minnesota DOE has a publicly available spreadsheet of all the charter schools that have been closed in the state with a brief reason for their closures.

My post also added as an addendum a Strib story about the the “state’s lowest-performing 32 schools.”

Levine certainly didn’t “have to” “do” much “research”; the anti-charter lobby circulates the numbers regularly.

You want “honest advocacy?”  Watch, Rob Levine, and see how it’s done.  Here’s a good place to start, since at last last he moves on to some numbers – sort of:

At the time I wrote:

Of those, 11 are charters. That means 11 of 154 charter schools are failing, a failure rate of seven percent. Twenty one of the failing 32 are regular public schools; there are 2,485 regular public schools in the state, giving a failure rate of less than one percent. So by the Minnesota DOE’s own numbers, charter schools in Minnesota are failing at a rate seven times greater than regular public schools.

And there’s one of the greatest misrepresentations there is about charter schools.

As I pointed out almost two years ago, comparing system-wide academic failure rates is like comparing apples and axles; Public schools can shunt kids that drag their curves off into the “Alternative Learning Center” (ALC) system.  (I pointed this out in my first response to Levine, who apparently thinks that repeating the same flawed “data” with a dollop of unearned condescension makes the data better).   At the same time, charters’ academic numbers are affected by the fact that charters are where parents go when the public schools have failed their kids – when years in the factory school system have sapped their interest in the whole “school” thing.  Charters – especially in the city, and on the Indian reservation charters outstate – are cleaining up all kinds of messes. My family (my daughter and of course my son) is only one story among many.

So by the Pawlenty-run Minnesota DOE’s own standards, fully seven percent of the state’s charter schools were among the worst 32 performing schools in the state; only one percent of regular public schools were cited in the 32. It’s really not hard to do the math. Mitch Berg knows that these statistics drive a stake into the heart of arguments for more charter schools, which is why he must try to find a way around them. But there is none.

“Mitch Berg knows…?”  Again with the “Omniscient First Person”.

Here’s what Mitch Berg really knows; if you compare all charter schools to all public schools, charter schools will come in below.

I also know that here in the city, it’s because a huge percentage of charter school parents are from populations that the regular public school system has a hard time serving adequately; the poor, the ESL student, the minority, the Native American, the immigrant – populations that suffer huge achievement gaps, even with nasty high dropout rates (which take those kids off the public schools’ books).  The public system rips its hair out trying to fix the achievement gap among black students.  H’mong boys are also difficult.  And so the public school fails at educating them.  And Latinos.  And ESL students.  And special ed.   And kids who just plain don’t learn well under the tradictional “sit your butt in the chair and learn what the curriculum planner tells you to learn, when she tells you to learn it” model of education.

Here’s what else I know – something Rob Levine is too disingenuous, or incurious, to find out for himself.  I know most of the specific schools in the Strib article Levine cites.  And I can Google:

• East High School – No school by that name is listed in the directory of state charter schools.  If it’s East Range Technical, in Eveleth, it’s a school that deals largely with high school kids that have had trouble in traditional schools.   Do you suppose Rob Levine knows this?
• Four Directions Charter School – a Minneapolis charter that serves the city’s Native American community.  Have you seen Minneapolis’ achievement gap for Native Americans?  The dropout rate?  I’m guessing Rob  Levine doesn’t.
• High School for Recording Arts, a St. Paul charter that tries to reach inner-city youth through music education.
• Hmong College Prep Academy High School, one of many schools serving the H’mong community; the public schools have an especially hard time with H’mong boys.
• New Spirit Primary School is a Frogtown primary school – just up the street from Maxfield elementary, where my daughter went to first grade (with an excellent teacher), and which is also on the “failing” list.
• New Visions Charter School, in Northeast Minneapolis, serves disabled kids.
• Riverway Secondary, a Winona school with a 70 percent poverty rate.
• Rochester Off-Campus Charter High – it’s an alternative charter for kids who’ve had one academic or personal crisis or another; among its listed “resources” is a crisis nursery.
• Transitions Senior High, located in Minneapolis’ down-market Phillips neighborhood, serves an extremely poor clientele.
• Unity Campus is a North Minneapolis charter that serves a very low-income clientele.
• Urban Academy Charter School is a Saint Paul charter that serves kids who’ve cratered in the public system.

So there you have it; the 11 charter schools on the state’s list are ones that serve students, and neighborhoods, and populations that the regular system fails at, too.  Look at the Strib article Levine referenced; practically every failing charter has a public-school neighbor, serving a similar population, that is also failing!

Of course, “look at the failing charters” is a cheap out for those who just know what they think even though they don’t bother to look at the issue all that hard.  Two years ago, I compared apples to apples, comparing charters with their neighboring public schools, weighted for low-income, Engish as a Second Language (ESL) and special ed.  In most  cases charters do just as well and, in many, cases, better (the embattled Tariq Ibn Ziyad Muslim charter, whose students are mostly poor and ESL, has among the best test scores in the state).   And the really good charters – like the dozen or so in the “Friends of Education” chain, serving both well-off and desperately poor clienteles – routinely clobber their public neighbors.

I got that through “research” – or, as Rob Levine calls it, “sophistry”, I guess.

Look – the point isn’t to get into endless whizzing matches with lesser bloggers like Levine.  He may be a perfectly fine human being.  I’m not sure if he has kids in school; he doesn’t write like someone who does, but I’ve been wrong before.

The point is, we parents who chose charter schools did it for a reason.  Rob Levine would have you believe that reason is “stupidity”.  Feel free to make that case to a room full of charter parents, if you’d like; you’ll more likely find that they are more involved than your typical roomful of public school parents.

Do some charters fail?  Of course; some of them spectacularly, and for nefarious reasons.  For some, that’s a law-enforcement matter.  As it should be.  Have some been complete frauds?  Sure – you put government money out there, and not everyone who shows up for a share is going to be honest.  They’re not the perfect solution;

Just the best one many of us can afford.

Do some charters struggle academically?  Of course.  And in some cases, it’s because the schools aren’t that good.  Just like some public schools are terrible; let me tell you about Saint Paul Central High School for a while (or, for that matter, Gordon Parks High – here, here, here or here, if you want to see your public school dollars at work).  Levine’s main point, to the extent that he makes one, is simply regurgitating the banal obvious, and then mocking people who don’t pat him on the head and say “thanks, Rob, that was a very special list of stuff everyone knows!  Have a cookie!”.

But if the  Minnesota Department of Education, and for that matter anyone on either side of the charter school question, want to get to some meaningful information, here’s what they should try; instead of measuring schools, they should measure individual students, comparing their public and charter school performances over a significant period of time.  Because given that charter schools take a large percentage of kids with whom the traditional public schools have failed, singly and as groups, and that charters don’t have the rug of the “Alternative Learning Centers” to sweep the kids they can’t reach under, it’s a given that charters, considered broadly, are going to suffer in aggregate numbers.  But aggregating individual students’ improvement (or deterioration, I suppose) over time would give you an actual accurate picture of what charters, or at least the majority that are good, are doing.  It’d help you find out why parents drive their kids from Prior Lake to attend Avalon, on University Avenue in Saint Paul, or from Forest Lake to go to General Vessey in Inver Grove Heights, or from White Bear to go to Nova Academy in Highland Park.

That would take effort, of course. Name-calling is much easier – and won’t get people razzing you at “Drinking Liberally“.  Some people would prefer to stick with the name-calling, the context-mangling, the regurgitation of statistics that can not possibly tell the real story.

Which of these is Rob Levine?

Hope springs eternal.

I’m more likely to get that third date with Scarlett Johannson, but that’s the nature of hope.

Ann Althouse notes that some of the protesters are starting to lose it:

I see some people descending into irrationality — beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders. Meade was at a demonstration, photographing it. A demonstration is — to a clear-thinking person — a collection of people asking to be seen, wanting to be photographed. Yet when they perceive that Meade isn’t one of them they flip — it’s a Flip camera — into fear. Meade had been trying to talk to them rationally about why the pro-Walker woman might not want to debate her ideas in that setting, and instead of seeing Meade as a citizen who’s finding out what’s going on and helping 2 women who are surrounded and outnumbered, they spread their “plant” theory. And it’s not just a theory. They know he’s a plant.

Context?  Sure – read the piece.

Wisconsin Democrats chide Republicans for…showing insufficient respect for Democracy?”

Democrats agreed before dawn [this past Thursday] to limit the remaining number of amendments they offer and the time they devote to each one. That [led to Friday’s vote] on the measure Gov. Scott Walker insists is necessary to ease the state’s budget woes and avoid mass layoffs.

“We will strongly make our points, but understand you are limiting the voice of the public as you do this,” said Democratic state Rep. Mark Pocan of Madison. “You can’t dictate democracy. You are limiting the people’s voice with this agreement this morning.”

“Yeah!  Like if you teabagging wingnuts nullified a legal election with a 6% mandate by packing up and leaving the state or something!”

The marathon session in the Assembly was grand political theater, with exhausted lawmakers limping around the chamber, rubbing their eyes and yawning as Wednesday night dragged into Thursday.

Around midnight, Rep. Dean Kaufert, a Republican from Neenah, accused Democrats of putting on a show for the protesters. Democrats leapt up and started shouting.

“I’m sorry if democracy is a little inconvenient, and you had to stay up two nights in a row,” Pocan said. “Is this inconvenient? Hell, yeah, it’s inconvenient! But we’re going to be heard!”

I think it’s about time the majority of Wisconsin voters said the same thing to these hamster.

Stipulated:  SNL hasn’t been funny since Norm McDonald left the show.

Still – as everyone in the media noted during the 2008 campaign, when  you’ve lost SNL, it’s significant.  Or something.

Just saying:

Stereotypes?  Doy.

A stereotype that, for some unconscionable reason, a huge chunk of America buys into?

A union thug with a bullhorn attacks a peaceful Tea Party protester at a “Work Til You’re 70 So We Can Retire At 55” rally in Sacramento:

As always – inevitably, without meaningful exception – the avalanche of violence is always, Always, Always, ALWAYS on the left.

Always.

The other day, I passed along a question from “Terry”, a regular in my comment section:

Why should I be required to work until I’m 70 so you can retire at 55?

Polls, incidents, and other ephemera aside, that really is the only question that matters, in Wisconsin  or, really, anywhere.  It’s a moral question; is your life, your job, your time on this planet worth so much more than mine that I should be required to pay for you to have that benefit?

Government union workers, for the most part, do the same sort of work all of us in the private sector do.  A teacher doesn’t have any voodoo that a corporate trainer doesn’t (indeed, most of the corporate trainers I’ve met started as teachers); a public works employee does the same things a carpenter or block layer or pipefitter or a few dozen other trades do in the private sector.  So when one of them asks the rest of us “Could you do my job?”, it’s not like society at large can’t respond “we already do”.  Cops and firemen are exceptions – at least partly.

And it’s not like government workers still make the traditional trade-off – lower pay for better benefits.  That was the case, not too long ago – but fifty years of union organization have have given unions members pay equal to or better than their private-sector equivalents (in the lower to middle income brackets, at the very least) along with the defined-benefit pensions that add the lifetime salaries for 20-30 years’ work.

So the question remains: why should I have to work until I’m 70 so you can retire at 55?

Someone on Twitter the other day told me “they’re not mutually exclusive”, although he couldn’t say why.  The fact is that right now, in this economy, and likely for the rest of my working life, they are mutually exclusive; as my “pension” – my IRA and the value of my home – have shrunk your pension remains a “promise”.  And if I can’t pay for that “promise”, the IRS and MN Department of Revenue will make my life hell.

So all you Wisconsin union supporters – please make the moral case:   Why should I be required (by the force of law, with tax agents and sheriffs with guns) to work until I’m 70 to (be able to afford, maybe, if I’m lucky) to retire so that you can retire at 55 (and life the rest of your life on money that the full force of the state will extract from me, and my children, and my grandchildren?  While I scramble to try to make up the losses of this last three years, likely for the rest of my working life?)

The comment section is yours.

(more…)

Wisconsin’s “labor movement” protesters have adopted a couple of new symbols.

The first, of course, is the very word “Solidarity”, although to be fair its use by radical left-wing labor activists long-predates the Polish “Solidarity” movement.  Since nobody retired the number, I suppose they can put it on their jersey.

But the “raised fist” is a pretty loaded symbol.  It’s been used by (according to this Wikipedia bit, with me adding a few bits of emphasis):

* Albanian National Liberation Front

* American Indian Movement

* Anarchist Black Cross

* Black Panther Party

* Democratic Labour Party of Brazil

* Earth First!

* Women’s Liberation

* Food Not Bombs

* International Brigades

* International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

* Italian Radical Party

* Jewish Defense League

* Kach

* National Equality March

* Otpor

* Parti Sosialis Malaysia (Socialist Party of Malaysia)

* Revolutionary Socialist Workers’ Party (Turkey)

* Red Front Fighters’ League

* Saor Éire (1967-1975)

* Socialist International

* Socialist Party of England and Wales

* Socialist Workers Party (Britain)

* Socialist Youth Front

* United Farm Workers

* Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front

Not to mention, if I recall correctly, Mussolini’s Camicia Neri, the “Black Shirts”.

Now, they can pick any symbol they want.  It’s a free country.

It’s just that with all the nation’s media and self-appointed social consciences having the victorian vapours over the most tangential symbolism among the Tea Party, it’s kinda odd that there’s no comment about a symbol that is linked on the one hand with a lot of violence, even terrorism (not that the unions seem averse to that, if only rhetorically)…

…and on the other with various Civil Rights movements – as if the “Right” to demand others pay for a standard of living they themselves cannot afford is on par with the right to vote and be considered equal before the law.

Just saying.

(Via Torin K at the TPL)

To: The Twin Cities mainstream media

From: Mitch Berg, Regular Schnook

Re: Double Standard

Dear Madames and Sirs,

Remember the spring of 2010?  When you furrowed your stately brows and tut-tutted about the ugliness, “vitriol” and “incipient violence” in American politics, when some of you noticed some questionable signs among a tiny fringe of Tea Partiers?  Many of which were shown to be either beyond the fringe, out of context, or complete false flags?

I’m wondering where the indignation, the brow-furrowing, the concern is over this:

Or this?

The left and media (pardon the redundancy) yakked a lot about purported racism at Tea Party rallies, especially the rally at the Capitol last March.  You fretted and phumphered and worried about our nation falling apart.

Any comment about this?

Not to rush you, but are you planning on furrowing your brows anytime soon over this?

If not – is it because you are, as your colleagues in Milwaukee are reported to be, in the bag for the protesters?

Or is it because your union pressman or cameraman will break your knees?

Let me know, OK?

Thanks.

That is all.