[I just sent the following to Mark Dean, director of Common Cause MN, which just filed a complaint against conservative PAC “Minnesota’s Future” for doing exactly what “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota” and “The 2010 Fund” have been doing – or about 10% of what they’re doing, anyway…]

Mr. Dean,

I’m Mitch Berg, one of the hosts of the Northern Alliance Radio Network on AM1280 in the Twin Cities.

I’d like to invite you to appear on the “NARN” with Ed Morrissey and I one of these next weekends to discuss your complaint against “Minnesota’s Future”; we’re curious why Common Cause has neglected to file a similar complaint against “”Alliance For A Better MInnesota”, “Win Minnesota” and “The 2010 Fund”, which are doing exactly what you allege Minnesota’s Future has done, only with many times more money.

On the chance it was all a ghastly oversight, I’ll bring a complaint form. We can fill it out on the air together.

While the request is pointed, the Northern Alliance prides ourselves on doing civil, respectful interviews. Previous “non-partisan” guests include RT Rybak, Dane Smith, Eric Black and Rochelle Olson.

We would sincerely love to discuss this before the election.

Let me know if any of the next few Saturdays work. Our program airs from 1-3PM.

I do hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Mitch Berg

Co-host, The Northern Alliance Radio Network,

AM1280 (WWTC-AM) Radio.

“Shot In The Dark” (www.shotinthedark.info)

“True North” (www.looktruenorth.com).

Remember when we first looked at the Dayton Dustbowl, back on Labor Day?

We looked at all the holes in the original Dayton Dustbowl – the 1.0 version of Mark Dayton’s budget plan.

One bit that got carried through verbatim in Dust Bowl 2.0 was this plan – to save $425 million per biennium by halving the number of contractors employed by the state.

Has it really only been a month?

At any rate, Catherine Richter of MPR’s “Poligraph” reports on what SITD readers have known for a month, now; that this just isn’t going to work:

Dayton’s correct that the state spends approximately $850 million per biennium on outsourcing. And cutting such activity in half could save the state more than $400 million.

But in practice, Dayton’s plan appears difficult to implement. Many of the state’s contracts provide essential services that the state would still have to supply one way or another.

And I had forgotten about this next bit, here (emphasis added):

Further, Minnesota law requires departments and agencies prove no state workers can take on these tasks before they contract with a firm.

Minnesota contractors already provide services that are either legally mandated, completely unavailable on the state workforce, or both; bridge engineers, business analysts, concrete workers, surveyors, usability engineers, prison doctors and the hundreds or thousands of other jobs that state doesn’t need at all, until they absolutely, positively do.

If the state gets rid of “half” of the contractors – who are already doing jobs that the state needs, but does not have in the workforce – then in most cases someone’s gotta do it.

And that “someone” is going to be union labor, in all its exquisite expense, and racking up all those hideously expensive defined-benefit pensions that are going to eat this state alive about the time our kids start paying taxes.

The way I see it, that’s a $425,000,000 hole per biennium blown in the Dayton 2.0 budget.  Tack that onto the $890,000,000 shortfall it already has – by the Dayton campaign’s own admission! – and the Son Of Dayton Dustbowl is actually $1.315 billion short of solving the deficit.

The conservative alt media has called another one.

Common Cause Minnesota is a “non-profit, non-partisan” organization whose every initiative is, mirabile dictu, exactly in sync with the “progressive” wing of the Minnesota DFL.

No huge shock there.

Speech rationing – “campaign finance reform” – has long been one of their main initiatives.  Read for yourself.  They want – so they claim – transparency in politics.

Of course, as Luke Hellier notes at MDE, they are a 501c4 lobbying organization which, in 2008, took in over $665,000 on donations, entirely from anonymous “individual” sources (check it out starting on Page 13 of this very large PDF file).

Sample swiped from MDE

Now, the law doesn’t require them to divulge exactly who their donors are – which is kind of a weaselly out for a group that wants government to limit and regulate your First Amendment right to political speech.

At any rate, yesterday they released word that they were going to file a complaint against a series of Minnesota political action committees (PACs) that were playing a shell game with third-party donations, trying to make accountability difficult.

And given how hard Common Cause has been proclaiming their ecumenicism and non-partisan mission, I thought “Halleluiah!  They’re going to do something about the epic three-card monte game the Dayton campaign has going on!”

As we discussed last June, the Dayton campaign was being supported by a huge ad campaign from a group called “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.  At that time, ABM’s funding came from a bunch of unions, and a group called “Win Minnesota”, which was largely funded by…the Dayton family; as of last June, the list was…:

• Andrew Dayton $1,000
• David Dayton $50,000
• John cowles $25,000 [former Strib publisher]
• 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 [remember them; they’ll appear later in this story]

Win Minnesota also funded a group which at the time had no name, but which shared an address with Win Minnesota, which has since been named “The 2010 Fund”.   2010 of last June had about $850K in the bank, including money 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 [the “progressive” plutocrat former owner of Thomson/West publishing]
• Afscme Council 5 $50,000
• MN AFL-CIO $25,000
• SEIU MN State Council $50,000
• AFSCME (Wash DC) $50,000;

I’m looking for the updated numbers from all of these funds.

So who does Common Cause go after?

Who would you think? (emphasis added):

Common Cause Minnesota has uncovered a scheme by the Minnesota’s Future political committee and the Republican Governors Association (RGA) to avoid Minnesota’s original source disclosure law by funneling a $428,000 contribution from the RGA to Minnesota’s Future through a shell company. The company, Minnesota Future, LLC was created just days before it received the contribution from the RGA and immediately transferred the funds to the Minnesota’s Future political committee.

Today, three separate complaints were filed with the Minnesota Campaign Finance Disclosure Board against Minnesota’s Future, Minnesota Future, LLC, and the RGA. The complaints allege that the three groups together violated multiple state statutes ranging from circumvention of campaign finance laws, failing to register as a political committee, and failing to report receipts and expenditures. The three entities could face $5.1 million in civil penalties and criminal prosecution.

“This was a brazen attempt to circumvent Minnesota’s disclosure law,” said Mike Dean, Executive Director of Common Cause Minnesota. “The public has a right to know what special interests are behind political ads, especially during a hotly contested election.”

So the public has a “right to know” the money behind “Minnesota’s Future” from the Republican Governors Association…

…but the multiple millions of dollars from the Dayton Family, the unions, and the Democratic Governors Assocication which financed the most vile smear campaign in the history of Minnesota politics (under the cover of a phony grass-roots organization funded by the Dayton family!) isn’t something “the public” needs to know about?

I’ve invited a representative of Common Cause to come on the Northern Alliance tomorrow to discuss what would be brazen hypocrisy from a genuinely “non-partisan” organization.

Any bets?

“Independence” Party candidate Tom Horner’s been telling voters that his budget plan – calling for about $2 Billion in tax increases, which is half of Mark Dayton’s planned hikes (which will leave  a $1 Bilion deficit) and about $2Billion more than Emmer’s plan (which will balance the budget) – has been vetted by the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

Um…:

Officials at the Minnesota Department of Revenue are saying Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner has not submitted his budget plan for review, but that Horner’s campaign contacted them to see if the tax plan would work.

Not only did he lie about it, he was kind of a dink about it:

At the most recent debate last week, Horner said he submitted his budget plan for a review…

Horner: “We’re going to take medical services off of the table. We won’t tax those. We won’t tax prescription drugs or medical devices and the numbers do add up.

Republican Tom Emmer: No they don’t.

Horner: The Revenue Department says they did.

Emmer: They have not and you have to be honest about it.

Horner: I’m just curious as to where your information is that the Department of Revenue has said my numbers don’t add up because the Department of Revenue told me that the numbers do add up.

Emmer: Well put it out there. We’ve asked and haven’t been given anything that supports that.

Horner: Tom, That’s just not true, you know that’s not true.

Emmer: What we have been shown is that you have to make much broader attempt.

Horner: That’s just a blatant lie.”

“Blatant lie?”

Hm.

Laws against texting and driving – including Minnesota’s – perversely increase text-driving accidents:

HLDI studied collision claims before and after four states (California, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Washington) banned texting, and compared the data with crashes in nearby states where texting laws did not change. Thirty states, the District of Columbia, and Guam prohibit texting while driving, while eight states, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands prohibit the handheld use of mobile phones behind the wheel.

“Texting bans haven’t reduced crashes at all. In a perverse twist, crashes increased in 3 of the 4 states we studied after bans were enacted. It’s an indication that texting bans might even increase the risk of texting for drivers who continue to do so despite the laws,” said Adrian Lund, president of HLDI and IIHS. “The point of texting bans is to reduce crashes, and by this essential measure the laws are ineffective.”

The crash increases seen in the states ranged from 1% in Washington state to 9% in Minnesota. However, young drivers are more likely to get into crashes – accidents went up in each of the four states among those drivers after the texting laws took effect. The largest hike was 12% in California.

On the one hand, it might mean that there are 9% more texters.  Or that 9% of texters didn’t hear about the law.

Or that text-messagers are taking such absurd measures to hide their texting from cops and other drivers that they are  making themselves more dangerous than they’d have been otherwise.

They are, in short, not Happy To Stop Texting For A Better Minnesota.

Now if people won’t stop text messaging to avoid crashes, lawsuits and death, because they see it in their best interest (rightly or wrongly) to evade the spirit and letter of the law, how does the DFL figure they won’t work even harder to avoid being seen as making over $150K a year come tax time under a Mark Dayton regime?