Contrast this ad with the scabrous, fact-free, ad-hominem tripe Alliance for a Better Minnesota was foisting on us over the past few weeks:

Who’s the actual governor, here?

Contestanat #1

“We can build [a major freeway] from Michigan to [the candidate’s state] and widen major highways across the state.”

“Let’s get [the candidate’s state] and America back to work and move South Carolina and America forward,” he said.

Contestant #3

..>We’re going to see some big things happening for instance in Saint Paulfor example with Central Corridor being the largest work project in the state of Minnesota , with state and local and government funding, investing in our community um so I’m very pleased that people’re going to see more of those projects moving forward

Greene has, in the past, said that manufacturing action figures of himself would be a boost to the economy. If that is still part of his platform he did not mention it.

Your Answer (Pick one)

a) 1 is Betty McCollum, 2 is that crazy guy from South Carolina

b) 1 is that crazy guy from South Carolina – Alvin Greene, that’s name! And 2 is Betty McCollum

c) Who can tell?

Answer below the fold.

(more…)

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

I’m including the UStream feed here:
Streaming live video by Ustream

And here’s the chat feed:

So tune in!  You can also listen via the AM1100 website. Call in at 888-598-8464, or email rob@sayanythingblog.com.

Teresa Collett’s website.

Ed Matthews, running for Ramsey County Judge.

 The Dems have officially run out of stuff to talk about.

So they’ve gone back to reruns of earlier tempests in teapots.

A “Jim Horan” fobbed a “story” off on “Talking Points Memo”  via  Twitter:

RT @tpmmedia: Flashback: Emmer Had Past DWIs — And Sponsored Bills To Soften DWI Laws http://tpm.ly/a244GP

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, all the smart people dealt with this “issue” quite some time ago.  The DWIs were in 1981 and 1991; Emmer sponsored legislation to make it possible for people who’d been convicted but kept their noses clean to get out of under some of the more onerous burdens of sentencing earlier.  I wrote the first time this issue emerged, when the issue came out before the GOP convention…:

…regarding a couple of DWI-related charges, that…Tom Emmer, got 19 and 29 years ago – questioning not only his character due to the arrests, but some legislation he backed that’d have had the effect of treating drunk drivers as innocent until proven guilty and making DUIs private information after ten years of good behavior – in other words, allowing people who’d made  a dumb mistake to function and get their lives back. Drunk driving is an emotional issue – made all the more so by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the drunk driving lobby.  It’s understandable; anyone who’s lost a loved one to a drunk driver is justifiably motivated to seek change.   But the .08 blood alcohol level limit is a ludicrious waste of resources, and the resources spent on hammering on first-time, only-time offenders with low levels of intoxication are largely a complete waste.

Question:  Does saying the above mean I “support” or am “soft on” drunk drivers and drunk driving?

But it’s ludicrous to treat attempts to make the system fairer and more rational as “sympathy for drunk drivers”.  Almost as ludicrous as assuming two mistakes made a generation ago are defining traits about a late-fortysomething guys’ judgment.

 All the smart people dealt with this issue three months ago.

But DFL propaganda is never aimed at smart people.

Oh, yeah – who’s pushing the story?  Who is “Jim Horan?”

He’s working for Independence Party candidate stealth DFLer Tom Horner:

Screenshot from LinkedIn

That sound you hear?  It’s the sound of Tom “Weasel” Horner’s campaign scraping the ground below the bottom of the barrel.

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

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

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

Because they run through a lot of money!

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

Where did that money come from?

Their donor list is as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

We’ll come back to both of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how about this year?

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

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

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

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

And where did that $850,000 come from?

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

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

The ex-wife of candidate Mark Dayton.

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

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

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

OK, so it was a rough week.

It’s July.  Four months ’til the election.  The DFL doesn’t have a candidate yet – and when they do, it’ll be Time magazine’s “The Worst Senator In America“, 2005 edition.  Half of Minnesota doesn’t even know who Tom Emmer is – yet.   And the DFL’s “third party” gambit, Tom Horner, has backfired, drawing three DFLers for every two Republicans – and that’ll get worse as the realization sinks in that Mark Freaking Dayton might be governor.

Issues, you say?  We’ve got immigration; we’ve got job creation; we’ve got economic growth and resposible government; we’ve got education reform and school choice and Local Government Aid reform and the DFL’s deep, enthusiastic links to everything that sucks about Barack Obama’s administration.  They’ve got lies and contrived controversies that’ll be forgotten on August 11.

So if you’re one of those lily-livered GOPers who’ve spent the last week wringing their hands over the denouement of “TipCreditGate”, stop.  Sack up, people; the real race doesn’t even start for a month, and media stunts like the faux outrage over the tip credit is the best they’ve got.

Bag the panic, folks.  This is when the fun part begins.

Wanna talk policy?

Or you wanna dump pennies on candidates?

Here is the attention-whoring, self-promoting face of the Minnesota DFL.

It’s “Robert Erickson”, and we’ve run into him before, of course:

He’s convinced himself that Minnesotans want open borders, and that making sure immigration is safe, available  and legal is for squares.

And he interrupted yesterday’s town hall meeting to dump a bag of pennies on Tom Emmer.

So you wanna talk about immigration, DFL?

I think we’re more than ready for that discussion.

Make sure you send that oh-s0-special lad Robert to have that discussion with us, DFL.

Let’s talk!

Tom Emmer is having a town hall meeting with restaurant and bar workers today.  It’s at Ol’ Mexico in Roseville, and the doors open at 2:30.  If you’re a restauranteur or publican, it’d be a great idea to be there early with bells on.  I’m trying to find if anyone is live-streaming the event.

Here’s what’s cool about the event; despite the fact that the whole “Tip Credit” kerfuffle is a manufactured controversy as the media tries to help the DFL run out the clock until Mark Dayton wins the primary, and that the whole fracas is a red herring (focusing on a virtual non-issue at a low level to ignore the larger point – that the Mininum Wage is a job killer, especially in hospitality, one of Minnesota’s most important industries), Tom Emmer isn’t shuffling away from the issue; he’s not trying to sweep it under the rug. 

He’s attacking it head on, like a defenseman checking the snot out of a winger. 

And if I know Tom Emmer, 100 people may walk into Ol’ Mexico unconvinced – and 75 will walk out converted, or at least saying “hmm – the guy’s got a point and, by the way, all that stuff Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota has been saying is crap“.

Because that’s Tom Emmer’s big strength; while he speaks in terms of principles – big-picture ideas that are easy for the DFL’s professional deceivers to pervert – he’s also the best politician in the state explaining to people, regular schmucks in the street, why those principles matter to them.  Why they keep jobs in their towns and money in their wallets.

I’m looking for Emmer to stomp the tip credit issue into history today (not that the DFL, media and leftyblogs won’t try to keep flogging it); more important, I’m looking for him to start showing people the truth behind the kerfuffle; cutting taxes, regulations and other bureaucratic overburden creates jobs, makes entrepreneurship viable, and brings more wealth to individual Minnesotans.

The sort of thing Chris Christie is doing in Jersey today.  The kind of thing Norm Coleman did in Paul and Brett Schundler did in Jersey City in the 1990s.  The kind of thing Ronald Reagan did for the whole nation thirty years ago.  The kind of thing that leaders do to make their cities, states and nations great.

Look for the DFL and media to bend over backwards to try to keep the word from getting out.

Dog Bites Man:  DFL-linked pressure group lying like a bunch of crack addicts caught with a stolen Lexus.

Man bites dog;  Twin Cities media checks the facts against objective reality.

If you read the Twin Cities center-right alternative media, you know that “Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota” is the most honesty-challenged roomful of bags of suppurating demi-human byproduct since Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund was still on peoples’ rolodexes.

But if you get your news from the Strib, the PiPress, MPR, WCCO or KARE11, you’d never know.

But KSTP5?  Glory be – truth matters to someone!  Channel Five’s “Truth Test” segment went over A4aBM’s latest TV ad effort and, well, probably lost the A4aBM account for Channel Five.

The ad tries to link Emmer … to Governor Tim Pawlenty. It claims Emmer sided with Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force CEOs and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

This claim is false, at least according to the date of a house vote cited in the ad. On May 10th, Emmer did vote against a bill that would have increased income taxes by $443 million through the creation of one of the highest tax rates in the nation. But it makes no mention of CEO or corporate taxes. Every house Republican voted against it, along with 16 Democrats.

And it gets better:

The ad also claims the two supported a plan that created a huge deficit and cut funding for items such as health care, education, and job training.

This claim is also false. It’s a reference to the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Pawlenty’s 2009 unallotment plan the legislature did not vote on. The ruling did have the effect of reinstating nearly $3 billion from the previous year’s deficit, but it didn’t create a new deficit.

And that man is getting down and gnawing that dog’s leg to the bone:

Based on the series of misleading or false claims, this ad gets an “F” on the Truth Test.

The center-right blogosphere has been catching A4aBM in lies ever since their web site, Twitter and Facebook accounts and ads all went on the air, two minutes after Emmer won the nomination last May.

So why does the DFL and its minions try such transparently, stupidly, sloppily deceitful propaganda?

Because it’s not aimed at smart people.  It’s aimed at the people the DFL counts on for winning elections; people who don’t pay attention; people whose understanding of issues stops at the last slogan they heard; people who bring nothing to democracy but a vote for the DFL.

It doesn’t have to pass scrutiny, if they know their audience won’t scrutinize it.

While I live in District 66B, a district with little more hope for change than Kinshasa or Pyongyang have, there is hope elsewhere.

I spoke at a fund raiser for Diane Anderson last night in Eagan.  That was fun; she’s got some momentum, and with a little help from her friends she might just eject the far-left but otherwise-ineffective Debra Masin from the House this November.

Also – my friend and radio colleague, King Banaian, has his campaign website up and going.

He also has a campaign blog (above and beyond his day blog).  He wrote this bit which needs to be on everyone’s mind these days:

Also met a younger man tonight, perhaps 30, who has been told his job running a kitchen is in jeopardy because the restaurant needs to balance its books. I told him that I wanted to balance the state’s books with without* increasing the costs at his restaurant. It turns out his family has other restaurants, one of whom my son cooks at! I asked him to thank his family for me, because I know they treat my son well there.

But it is hard for restaurants to keep treating their workers well when government decides to disallow a young person from working for a restaurant for less than the minimum wage. It is hard for a restaurant to keep treating its workers well when we raise taxes on liquor (already the highest-taxed good in Minnesota and taxed 20-80% higher than in surrounding states.) It is hard to treat your workers well when the government decides your sole proprietorship making $300,000 in net revenue should pay higher taxes out of ‘fairness’.

All that out of a 3-minute meeting with a voter in north St. Cloud. And I get to do that every day between now and November.

If you live in Eagan or Saint Cloud, your mission is clear…

…then please stop by Granite City in Eagan between 5:30 and 7-ish.  I’ll be speaking at a fundraiser for Diane Anderson, the GOP-endorsed candidate running against incumbent Sandra Masin.

I think Ed – who lives in the district – will be there.  Certainly if you live in or near Eagan, you should stop down and help Diane win this very winnable district.

Hope to see you there!

 The lastest KSTP-Survey USA poll shows Michele Bachmann up over Tarryl Clark by nine points with four months ’til the election.

Someone named “Alec”, a “diarist” at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, has a Matthews-y tingle running down his leg:

Someone else can write a nice front page post, but I am very excited by this. Bachmann 48, Clark 39. MOE 4%. Hard to believe the IP candidate only got 6%. With no name recognition, Clark is only down by 9. Bachmann is below 50% and her name rec is universal.

Four months ’til the election, with Clark benefitting from a blitz of advertising and friendly-to-fawning coverage in the Twin Cities media, before Bachmann has even really started seriously campaigning.  Seriously – Bachmann has yet to spend figurative dime one on her campaign.  There is no need to, not yet.

The “name recognition” is a red herring, too; all Bachmann’s negatives are in play, but Clark – a tax-and-spendaholic in a year and a district where that should be poisonous this fall – has only started to turn people off.  As “Alec” notes, she has no name recognition; that may be the best thing going for her so far.

And given the polarization of the numbers in the KSTP poll, I’m going to suspect that independents – who are breaking GOP nationwide – are not really sounding off yet.

Joe “Chloe” Bodell comments:

We’ll dig into the numbers later — but thanks to Alec for getting the news out to the ‘sphere.

This is good-to-great news, folks. – promoted by Joe Bodell)

Well, run this good-to-great news; at this point in 2006 and 2006, if memory serves (and I believe it does, but stop me if I’m wrong) Patty Wetterling was around nine points back in a bad GOP year, and Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenburg was closer than that two years ago in a much, much worse year.

I’ve been predicting an eight-point Bachmann win by November.  I’m seeing no reason not to be optimistic.

 A lot can happen in four months, of course.

Gary Gross also covers the topic.

Principles can be painful.

I, as an occasional independent consultant, would just love to land a gig leading the User Experience design effort for a big world-facing institutional application.  I’d love the opportunity to pitch my skills to one of these institutions, convince them that I’m the right guy for the job, and bask in the eventual glory of a job well designed.  To say nothing of the payoff of 12-24 months’ lucrative work.

But if the big instutional customer were a front for AFSCME, the SEIU and the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, and the job was a website to help “community organizers” track union members who violated “Card Check” rules for future retribution, and to link these objectors to other union “assets” (goons) to service the transaction (throw bricks through their windows and kill their dogs), principle would tell me I would need to bow out of the gig.  No matter how much it paid.

Principle has its price.

Would bowing out of the project be a huge mistake?  Business hari-kiri?  From a bottom-line sense, it might very well be.   If “Mitch Berg Design” were publicly-held, it might even violate my fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders.  But if it’s my call, given that I oppose Card Check to say nothing of union thuggery, it wouldn’t even be a serious question.

One of the better, more thought-provoking conservative blogs I’ve encountered lately is “Minnesota Conservatives”, a duoblog featuring Minneapolis conservative Barbara Malzacher and 4th CD blogger “Shabbosgoy” – who’s a fairly well-known goy/guy in Saint Paul GOP circles, but I don’t know if his real identity is something he’s put on the blog yet, so I’ll hold off on that for now (note to self; find out why they’re not in the MOB).

Last week, Shabbosgoy wrote a post,  “On Saving The Emmer Campaign From Itself”, that caused a bit of a stir among Emmer’s followers.

Shabbosgoy’s (I’m going to save my fingers and call him SG from here on) premise is that Emmer’s “Waiter’s Wage” kerfuffle was a huge hit to the campaign.

Not fatal, of course…:

Not being glass-half-empty liberals, however, MC believes the campaign can right itself and move forward to victory in November. But the change has to be immediate, if not sooner. And the person who came up with the town hall seppuku should be tasered.

Let’s walk through them one by one:

1. Cancel the seppuku. Sure Emmer will be mocked but such pales in comparison to being tagged as the guy who wants servers to make $2.13 an hour. Such tagging has been ongoing all this week.

Let’s define our terms.

“Seppuku” (the political version, not the Japanese ritual self-disembowelment) is saying “I have no idea what E85 is” while in the middle of Minnesota’s Corn belt; it’s betraying a crucial tone-deaf ignorance.

Favoring a return to the tip credit – the exact system Minnesota used for tipped workers until 1990, and that is used in 43 other states to allow for the fact that tipped waistaff don’t rely on hourly wages for the bulk of their income – is a stance for principle; in this case, the principle that mandated minimum wages kill jobs.

Is it going to cost Emmer votes – especially given the way the agenda-driven media has reproted the story?  Perhaps among food servers; I’m sure waitrons at places in outstate Minnesota where the locals still consider a buck a lavish tip for a $30 tab will be un-thrilled by the prospect.  And understanding how tip credits work is important (and most people don’t); it only counts for time when the worker can get tips; not for time spent folding napkins or cleaning out the ice machine in back (which is paid at at least the regular minimum wage, and which is time that most decent food service workers like to avoid, the better to be out working tables and raking in tips).

Among people who run businesses?  Especially among bars and restaurants, whose profit margins have always been razor-thin?  Who’ve seen their bottom lines squeezed by $5/hour for every single waitress or bartender they have out in the house for the past couple of decades?  Or among parents of teenagers (ahem) who have a harder time than ever finding entry-level minimum wage jobs as the minimum wage has risen?

I’m not so sure.

2. If the death wish can’t be scrubbed, then Emmer should come out for making tips and gratuities tax-free. Who cares what it does to revenue? Just get on the right side of this issue politically.

That in particular is a good, princpled, conservative approach to the issue.  It’s also a federal issue controlled by the IRS, and most likely not something a governor can carry off.

3. Stop running for the endorsement. Emmer won. He can’t win with the narrow base that propelled him to victory. He’s in a general election race now and any campaign staff that can’t grasp the obvious ought to be waiting tables. We jest! Don’t shoot!

But as I’ve seen it all along, Emmer’s campaign has been about running on conservative principles all along – and selling those principles to the middle to convince them to move to meet him on the right, rather than scuttling toward the center.

The principle in this case is “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” – or, more directly, “Get government out of the way of business creating more jobs”.  The loss of the tip credit has effectively tripled the cost of every waiter on a restauranteur’s or barkeep’s floor, giving them the option of slashing either profits or the number of waitstaff.  Emmer is proposing rectifying this.  The DFL and Media’s predictable response is “look at the money waiters might lose!” (when it’s not “where are the $100,000 waitstaff jobs?”); Emmer’s response, and that of his supporters, should be “but look at the jobs, averaging $8-15 an hour with tips, we’ll be creating!”.

4. Run on winning themes and speak of nothing else: lower taxes for all, less nanny-state interference in our lives, reduced state spending and the legitimate fear of the intellectually lazy DFL in control of the executive and legislative branches.

But I think that was Emmer’s point, if phrased inartfully and exploited deceptively.

5. Don’t take the post August 10th bait from Mark “Renoir-Toulouse Lautrec” Dayton. He’ll run a class warfare campaign and the tip-credit snafu only plays directly into that. Like most Democrats, he hasn’t had a new idea in decades. Point out he’s to the left of our wholly incompetent affirmative action President.

And here, SG is absolutely correct.

Finally, one friend of MC suggested something brilliant: bring in New Jersery Governor Chris Christie and campaign for real reform and not just tinkering around the edges. New ideas scare Democrats; so scare them!

I agree; Governor Christie is like the long-lost child of my own political idol, former Jersey City mayor Brett Schundler, who did for his city half a generation ago what Governor Christie is trying to do for the whole state today.

But here’s a question;  when it comes to tip credits, and the media and DFL’s (ptr) class-baiting response to the “story”, What Would Christie Do?

(Besides say “tip credits work in New Jersey”; the state is one of the 43 that allows ’em).

Voters will reward you. Look at what he’s doing in his state and think about what could be applied here to good effect. If Christie can have such success in New Jersey, MC holds out hope for this state of government workers.

Hope is good.

And to achieve hope, you need to start with a princple, and then move to achieve it.

And DFL/media caterwauling aside, I don’t think this past week has been a bad step on the way.

So Tom Emmer spent an evening waiting tables.

The real entree of the video, of course, starts around 2:55; he cuts to the real chase – we should stop taxing tips.

I’d love to see Margaret Anderson-Kelliher working as a barback.  Come to think of it, it might be good experience for after August 10.

As much as I’ve bagged on the press for their hatchet-jobbery as re the Emmer campaign, I’ll give well-deserved kudos to the PiPress’ Bill Salisbury for doing a fair, balanced piece that shows the reasons that a lot of us gravitated to Emmer in the first place.

Anecdote alert:

Tom Emmer’s father was struggling to keep his Edina lumberyard afloat during a deep recession in the early ’80s.

One day, his dad ordered his sons to put on their suits and ties and his wife and daughter to don dresses and climb into the family’s backyard swimming pool.

“We sat in the pool, water up to here,” Emmer recently recalled, holding his hand to his chest, “and he took a picture.”

At Christmastime, his father mailed the photo to friends and family with this message scrawled across the bottom: “The Emmers almost went under last year, but we’re coming out with a splash this year.”

Emmer, the Republican-endorsed candidate for Minnesota governor, said his father’s declaration symbolized how he learned to face adversity and obstacles.

“You need to take responsibility for those situations, stand up tall and make the best of it,” the three-term state representative said during a late-June campaign bus ride across southern Minnesota.

The whole thing is worth a read.

The “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” – an astroturf group sponsored by a consortium of DFL-linked pressure groups – has been behind much of the smear-mongering against Tom Emmer so far this campaign. They’ve occupied themselves with a klutzy false-flag website, a couple of twitter accounts (one of baldfaced propaganda, and one, “StuffEmmerSays”, that tried to mock Emmer statements but actually made him sound like Ronald Reagan to the point I spent the last month mocking it as a pro-GOP site; it seems to have worked, and the account seems to have demised).

And if that’s the best the DFL can do, this election’s not going to be nearly as hard as I’d worried.

“A4aBM” ran the first anti-Emmer ad of the campaign this week; and the Republican Twitterverse has been redounding with bits and pieces of the information A4aBM got wrong.

Long story short; the ad is warm runny bulls**t.

Claim #1: Audio: “Tom Emmer sided with Governor Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force corporations and CEOs to pay their fair share of taxes”  ABMBackup: “On May 18, 2009, Emmer voted against the second attempt at a DFL- written FY2010-2011 revenue bill…

Sounds pretty gnarly, huh?

The Truth: Tom Emmer did not cast a vote on this roll call.

Oh, my.  You mean, A4aBM got a fact wrong?

Well, the ad is 0-1 so far.

Claim #2: Audio: “They cut funding for education” ABM Backup: “On April 18, 2007, Emmer voted against HF 6, the K-12 funding bill, which passed the House with a huge bipartisan majority of 119-13. On May 8, 2007, Emmer again voted against the bill as it was re-passed on a similar 119-14 vote…

Voted against it twice?  Emphasis added:

The Truth: After April 18, 2007, there were no additional votes taken on this bill that year.  During the 2008 session, this bill was used as a “vehicle” and a delete-all amendment was added completely changing the bill.  The vote they reference on May 8, 2007 was actually a vote on May 8, 2008 and it wasn’t a vote on the bill but, rather, a procedural vote on whether the bill should be taken from the table.  Emmer voted against taking the bill from the table.

You’re trying to say A4aBM lied about the real intent of voting on a picayune procedural technicality in the life of a background-noise bill to try to smear Tom Emmer?  Say it isn’t so!

0-2 so far.

Claim #3: Audio: “[Tom Emmer and Tim Pawlenty] cut funding for education.”

The Truth: There is nothing in the bill cited that included a cut to education.  In addition, KSTP’s Tom Hauser recently had this to say about the claim that Governor Pawlenty cut education funding: “As for Pawlenty cutting education funding, that’s not true.  According to the education department, per pupil funding has gone up since 2004.”

0-3 – well, more like 0-4, really.

Claim #4: Audio: “[Emmer voted to cut] job training.”

The Truth: Nowhere in ABM’s backup is there any support for this claim.  “Training” is mentioned only once in the legislation, and that is in reference to home ownership education.  This bill had nothing to do with job training.

Zero for five.

Claim #5: Audio: “[Emmer and Pawlenty cut] job training and health care”.  On screen: “Source: Minnesota House Journal, 4/25/2005”

The Truth: According to the Minnesota House of Representatives Journal, the House was not in session on 4/25/2005, meaning there could be no Journal of the House for that day.  The Alliance’s citation, therefore, does not even exist.

So the lesson for today is, whenever “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” speaks, distrust and then verity.

Because the DFL asssumes that you, the people, are too stupid to know any better.

You live, you learn.

After eight and a half years of covering the journalistic geography in this town, some of the basic contours are as well-known as my bike ride to work; Lori Sturdevant will be a dozey DFL hack; Nick Coleman will be a thud-witted and utterly predictable DFL hack; Brian Lambert will be a rapier-witted but peek-a-boo DFL hack.

It’s rare that there’s anything new to cover.

And to be fair, the Strib’s John Tevlin isn’t exactly “new”; to be fairer, most of us who’ve been blogging for a while have sort of gotten numb to the Strib’s columnist’s row; we’re like drug addicts who need more and more of our chosen drug to even get a buzz.

Fortunately (?), the latest Tevlin column is dumb enough to crack the silt-like coating of ennui that chokes me whenever I try to read the Strib’s opinion pages.

When I read in Tuesday’s paper that Tom Emmer, the GOP-endorsed candidate for governor, claimed that three servers at the Eagle Street Grill in St. Paul “take home over $100,000 a year,” I high-tailed it over to the restaurant to get a piece of the action.

Reporter races to cover a story in a bar?  Flea bites dog as it bites man.

Emmer chose Eagle Street for a campaign stop to argue that the state should drop minimum wages for workers who earn tips, which he claims would help small businesses.

I wasn’t the first one in the door, but I was close. A guy with “Kevin” stitched on his shirt waited on me.

“Can I have an application for one of those $100,000 jobs?” I asked. Kevin looked like I’d just done a dine-and-dash on him, and I sensed it had not been a good day on Eagle Street.

I’m interested in the reaction the left in the Twin Cities – the DFL, the various echelons of leftybloggers at their command, and the Strib – have had to Emmer’s suggestion that the hospitality industry might benefit, and create more jobs, by returning to the same exact law Minnesota observed until 1990 – allowing restaurants and bars to pay less than minimum wage, because food servers can be expected to make more, sometimes much more, in tips; as Emmer noted, sometimes much, much more.

The reaction:  “What?  Every waiter and waitress will make $100,000?  Waiting tables pays better than being a low-level Java programmer?”, every one of them seems to find it amusing to ask in mawkishly mock amusement.

I sometimes wish they’d turn that keen sense of, um, humor to some of the other, more-carefully-focus-grouped claims that candidates put out there:

“Haha, Mark Dayton – so when we “tax the rich“, our whole five billion dollar deficit will vanish, right?  Poof, gone, ancient history?  Cool!”

“So, Matt Entenza – if we put just another two billion dollars into our education system, that will prevent one single more Afro-American kid from being shunted onto the “fail track”?  Just another two billion?  OK – so for ten billion, can we get every single kid in the Minneapolis school system into Yale?”

“Margaret Anderson-Kelliher – if we spend more money on “stimulus” work for the public employees unions…” – OK.  Sorry.  I can’t even get sarcastic about that anymore.

One thing I can get sarcastic about still is the contempt Jon Tevlin feels for working people:

Yeah, I said “contempt”.

“I’m a columnist at the newspaper across the river, and I could use a pay upgrade,” I said. “When can I start?”

I came prepared for a job interview, just in case. Even though I had no experience waiting tables, as a columnist I have plenty of experience being insulted by drunks late at night. I did tend bar for about three weeks at a place called the Goosetown Lounge, in New Ulm, to augment my paltry salary as a cub reporter, and I am known to mix a pretty good margarita.

A good waiter or bartender can take years to not only learn the tricks that separate the great from the OK – including the greatest trick of all, getting a job at a place where people spend lots of money and tip really really well.  I’m not sure if Jon Tevlin thinks that the waiters at, say, Manny’s – people who earn $200 tips on tables that run up $1,000 tabs – are the “cub reporters” of the food service business, or if he thinks he could impress one of the staff at the Saint Paul Grill with his bartending tales.

But in waiting, as with just about every other trade – carpentry, user experience design, medicine, plumbing, running a checkout station or a bookstore, the law – it takes years of experience to rise to the top of the trade.

Looking at the likes of Frank Rich, Mo Dowd, Lori Sturdevant and Jon Tevlin, it’d seem that journalism is the exception to the rule.

The owners said they have loyal employees who earn a good living, but that the tip credit change would save them more than $30,000.

One longtime bartender familiar with Eagle Street said that based on prices and clientele, he’d be surprised if anyone who relies on tips at Eagle Street makes much more than $50,000.

Oh.

Well.

So a worker who makes, by any measure, a modest but potentially-comfortable living from a job that requires no formal education or training, and who literally won’t notice the “cut” in the minimum wage, is offset by the fact that, I suppose, not every waitress is making $100K…or…huh?

Wade Luneburg, secretary-treasurer for Local 17 UNITE HERE, said such a cut would hurt many workers who barely get by.

Some servers and bartenders earn a decent living, he said, “but if you are talking about someone at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Slayton, they are usually women making very little in tips who have no health insurance,” said Luneburg.

With the likes of Jon Tevlin and Wade Luneburg, it’s always the stupid extremes; waitstaff either make more than registered nurses, or they are one step below crack whores.

“What Representative Emmer is saying is really reprehensible.”

Well, no.  Tevlin and Luneburg are being reprehensible; they’re doing their best to hop up and down and heap ignorant mockery on a statement that was, at the end of the day, perfectly correct; waiters who are making $25-50K a year won’t notice the money they lose to the tip credit; the woman at the Whistle Stop in Slayton might just have more options when the Whistle Stop’s competition can afford to hire another waitress (and maybe someone can teach out of state Minnesotans that a quarter is not a suitable tip for a $20 ticket.  Just saying).  Or maybe not.  There are no guarantees…

…except one; raising minimum wages cuts the number of entry-level jobs.

By noon, the owners had already fielded numerous angry calls. In fact, Geisen said, “lobbyists” who set up the Emmer appearance were on their way down to smooth things over and correct his quote, something that seems to be a full-time job these days.

Sort of like correcting Nick Coleman used to be.

Geisen ran off to fight another fire, and I had to feel for the guy. So I threw down another buck.

“That’s for Tom Emmer,” I said.

I was just trying to do my part, the poor giving back just a little bit to help out the rich.

The bad news?  The Strib just keeps getting dumber.

The good news?  The DFL must be really desperate to be spending this much effort courting the “waitress at a crappy 3:2 bar” vote, and courting them this badly.

Writing over at True North, Sheila Corbett Kihne – a former restaurant hostess – explains to the likes of John Tevlin and pretty much every leftyblogger how the restaurant trade works…

….since it seems none of them know anything about the business at all:

Now- let’s look at a basic scenario. Waitstaff gets paid $6.00 per hour by the employer- employer is given the OPTION to pay them $2.50 an hour and the employee has to make up that $3.50 per hour in tips. That equates to one table per hour with a Republican customer and a $18 tab (or with a Democrat a $24 tab.)

Employer saves $3.50 per hour, $140 per week, $560 per month, $6,720 per year multiplied by an entire waitstaff this is a TON of money. Money that would most likely be spent on expanding or improving the business. (Newflash to those who have never been in the restaurant business: there is not a lot of extra cash and most cash gets thrown right back into growing the business or saving money to handle the downturns.)

Perhaps a restaurant owner chooses to hire a better chef at a higher salary, word gets out that the food is excellent and business grows. Perhaps they decide to take out some new advertising to bring in new business. Perhaps they open a new patio or buy some nicer tables and chairs. Maybe they save up to open a second location. All of these things could give them the competitive edge they need to survive in this crappy economy. And if they’re able to survive they don’t have to layoff employees, if they’re somehow able to thrive maybe they can even hire more employees. Have you been to a restaurant lately? Unless it’s McDonalds, they’re all struggling. How much in commercial property taxes does the government lose when one closes? How much in sales tax, income tax?

Sheila also notes a factoid that virtually none of the Twin Cities’ media’s chattering classes can bother to mention; 43 states currently have the law that Emmer is proposing; as I’ve noted here in the past, Minnesota had the same law until 1990, when a DFL-controlled legislature insisted the lot of waitresses would improve greatly with a mandatory minimum wage – which, combined with Minnesota’s deeply stupid smoking law has left a lot of waitstaff out of work over the years.

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

But even Deans of Journalism make their errors.

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, great job!

“Ignore the fact that Mark Dayton is a trust fund baby who lives off of capital gains. Look at that caricature CEO!  Let’s get him!”

Can a little known newspaper publisher author a different ending for Tom Horner’s campaign?

If there truly exists a halfway point between gadfly and contender in the realm of politics, Independence Party gubernatorial hopeful Rob Hahn has staked his long-on-moxy and short-on-funds campaign on finding just such an electoral sweet spot. A distant undercard to the expensive heavyweight battle royale occuring on the DFL side of the ballot, the IP’s primary focus on promoting erstwhile liberal Republican Tom Horner has been complicated by the would-be William Randolph Hearst. 

While Hahn might be unknown to most voters (I passed one of the few visible signs of his campaign – a billboard near Rockford – this past week), the man claiming to be the “only real independent running for governor” has gained minor traction with the only section of the electorate paying close attention to politics in general – the media.  From announcing his running-mate selection, to calling on Horner to drop out of the race, and even his policy proposal of using riverboat gambling to enhance the state’s coffers, Hahn has been granted a level of legitimacy seemingly far surpassing his likely ability to wrest away the IP’s nod this August.  The real question may be why?

Part of the answer may have less to do with Hahn’s media background and more to do with an agenda that leans heavily on the credible side of his credible fringe candidate persona.  While Hahn’s riverboat gambling concept has received far more press than an idea that at best would only generate $400-600 million a year should get, Hahn has put forward solutions on the budget deficit that sound far more detailed than many of his opponents.  Hahn’s call alone for phasing out LGA funding and a 5-7% across-the-board cut in state government is more intricate and conservative than anything Tom Horner has publically committed to other than tax policies that are apparently to the left of even Matt Entenza.

But what may really fuel the coverage of Rob Hahn’s campaign is his willingness to attack Horner’s most publicized weakness – his unwillingness/inability to release his client list – coupled with the uncertainty of turnout for an August 10th Independence Party primary.

Horner’s lobbying with his now former firm Himle Horner has proven to be the bête noire of his campaign, leading even the Star Tribune to momentarily put down their promotion of Horner’s Republican past to wrap his knuckles over the lack of disclosure.  The issue is a classic political conundrum; Horner is legally bound to keep his clients’ identities hidden while the Strib and Hahn maintain every right to question the inherent conflicts of interest such a past entails.

Can such an issue – or any – prove powerful enough for Hahn to win?  It depends on how exactly hotly the primary will be.  The IP has come a long way since the dog days of the summer of 2000 when party officials publically worried that IP U.S. Senate nominee James Gibson might not be able to defeat the Harold Stassen of the environmental set, Leslie Davis, in the party’s primary (Davis was considered “strong” enough to be included in pre-primary polling questions).  A whopping 5,600 votes were cast that September between four candidates, leaving Gibson – and the party’s fledgling respectability – intact. 

Higher profile races since then have done little to drive turnout.  The IP’s 7 candidate U.S. Senate field in 2008 that featured former appointed Sen. Dean Barkley only saw 11,000 votes.  It would be little wonder then if at least a few political beat reporters believed Hahn capable of gaining the necessary 5,000 or 6,000 votes to pull off a mildly noticed upset.  With Horner and even long-time politicos like Doug Grow floating theories of cross-over mischief, such an outcome hasn’t been completely discounted.

More likely, Hahn’s wrath will be felt in 7-second MPR soundbites and tiny column inches buried in the metro section.  Enough perhaps to provide a respectable margin of defeat 30 days hence but not enough to provide the party’s biggest upset since their candidates wore feather boas.

Watch for the DFL smear machine to try to spin this story:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer says Minnesota should factor tips into the hourly pay for minimum wage workers in restaurants and other gratuity-based jobs.

After visiting a St. Paul restaurant Monday on a listening tour, Emmer advocated for a so-called “tip credit” to the state minimum wage.

This is entirely about bringing jobs back to the hospitality business in Minnesota, which has suffered badly in recent years, not only from the economy but from years of ill-advised regulations.

Minnesota is among seven states that currently prohibits employers paying workers less than the minimum wage if they earn tips, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

However, that’s only been true since 1990.  Before then, Minnesota had a tip credit also.

Minnesota has a state minimum wage of $5.25 for small employers and $6.15 for large employers, based on annual sales.

Emmer says tying base pay to tips will “level playing field so the employers can continue to exist, survive and thrive.”

Federal law permits states to drop the minimum wage to tipped employees to $2.13 per hour.

Opponents argue tips are too volatile to count on, especially for workers at the bottom of the pay ladder.

So here’s the question:  are the “workers at the bottom of the pay ladder” better off hustling for tips (which can be volatile and low, and can also be really really good money), or out of work entirely?

Because in this economy, that’s pretty much the choice.

After nearly a decade of demanding that the rest of America never ever call them unpatriotic, Gallup and Pew pollsboth show that, in fact, Democrats are:

Gallup found 58% of GOPer’s calling themselves “extremely patriotic,” as opposed to only 20% of Democrats so identifying. The numbers were a bit closer in the Pew poll, where 69% of Republicans called themselves “extremely proud” to be an American, and 43% of Democrats answered the same.

On one level, the general results should not be surprising. After all, the Right more likely to view America in terms of preserving the core principles that make it great, while the Left is more likely to be fixated on its foibles and failures (both real and imagined).

It’s yet another change Obama has brought us:

But what explains the increase in patriotism on the Right, particularly from 2006 to the present, when Democrats and progressivism has been on the rise? My hypothesis would be that the current version of the Democratic party, and the Obama administration in particular, has transformed big government into a cultural issue.

Don’t be hating.  It’s science.

As AP at Hot Air notes, Pam Gorman – who’s running for Congress in Arizona CD3, but first faces six other conservative Republicans in the primary – has upped the ante on “memorable” ads.

AP takes a whack at summing it all up:

The real question isn’t so much “is this what political advertising is about today?”

No.  It’s “what will an opponent have to come up with that’ll make a bigger impression than a 1928 Thompson?”

Suggestions solicited.