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”.

Parachutes might not actually save lives.

Serious.  The FDA has never run a double-blind study, there’s no academic literature on the subject, and therefore…

The perception that parachutes are a successful intervention is based largely on anecdotal evidence. Observational data have shown that their use is associated with morbidity and mortality, due to both failure of the intervention1 2 and iatrogenic complications*.3 In addition, “natural history” studies of free fall indicate that failure to take or deploy a parachute does not inevitably result in an adverse outcome.4 We therefore undertook a systematic review of randomised controlled trials of parachutes.

A few weeks ago, Brian “Saint Paul” Ward at Fraters – my longtime NARN colleague – vented his Tea-partying rage at U of M mascot Goldy Gopher:

I know I’ll never look upon his leading the “Ni, Ni, Ni” chant at hockey games in the same way again. All this time, he was referring to his putting his knee into the tax payers’ collective groin. Ski-U-Mah, indeed.

Someone has obviously taken Brian’s rant to heart:

An annoyed fan — a University of St. Thomas math professor and a devoted University of Minnesota booster — socked the fuzzy-suited mascot after tiring of his antics during a men’s gymnastics meet Saturday night.

The mascot-mauling left the professor red-faced, regretful and banned from the University of Minnesota’s Sports Pavilion and Williams Arena for a year. Goldy is left shaken, his gopher face damaged. And spectators didn’t know what to think.

“Honestly, we thought it was funny at the time,” said Barry Colthorpe, who watched the bleacher knock-down unfold as he sat with his wife. “I know it shouldn’t be funny that someone got punched, but the fact that it was a mascot, it was an unreal situation. But you can’t go around punching people even if it’s a mascot.”

Most fans know that Goldy tries to entertain crowds with light-hearted shenanigans. “He doesn’t mean any harm,” said Scott Ellison, U of M associate athletic director. “He’s just there to add a little fun.”

There’s a simmering pot of rage among those middle-aged academics.  Gotta be careful, Brian.

To: William Hailer

From: Mitch Berg, “uneducated racist”.

Re: Your ““NPR Exec says modern GOP party is controlled by the Tea Party whom are fairly racists and uneducated… I guess truth gets you fired” tweet

Dear Mr. Hailer,

Ryan Winker called.  He said to chill out, you’re giving “smug, elitist twerps who write rhetorical checks they don’t have the intellectual funds to cash” a bad name.

That is all.

MBerg

I’ve been pretty quiet about the Crow Wing County story that I covered last fall, around election-day.  Part of it has been that I’ve been too swamped with family and new job stuff to spend a lot of time trying to track down county officials and everyone else involved with the story. And part of it is that there have been other developments that just plain needed time to work out.

Which isn’t to say I haven’t done a little digging around.  I just haven’t written about it a lot.

In the original videos, taken the Saturday before election day, Monty Jensen – a disabled Army veteran who vigorously disclaims any history of  significant political activism – recounted his story; he and his girlfriend went to the Crow Wing County Courthouse to get absentee ballots (they both work and go to school in the Twin Cities, and wouldn’t be able to vote on election day).  They claimed to have seen a group of mentally-handicapped group home residents being herded through the Crow Wing County courthouse, and to have seen the group home’s staffers filling out the clients’ ballots for them – a clear violation of state law.

Jensen filed an affadavit on Election Day with Crow Wing County attorney Don Ryan.  The County Sheriff’s office carried out an investigation.  Ryan declined to prosecute; a source in the county courthouse speaking off the record said that Ryan acted under the discretion that Minnesota Statute 201.275 grants him.  There are questions about both the discretion – Ron Kaus is demanding a special prosecutor – and the investigation, which went as far as to interrogate Monty Jensen’s long-estranged father, but did not interview the second witness to the original incident, Jensen’s girlfriend.

When the story came out, there were three primary responses from the media and leftyblogs (other than the  usual “balderdash, our election system is the best in the nation hic best in the nation hic best in the nation…”):

1. “The Minnesota GOP is trying to disenfranchise the disabled!”:  This was an odd strawman; not only is Monty Jensen himself disabled, he’s restated endlessly that his only concern is the exploitation of the disabled; the use of the disabled as warm bodies to cast other peoples’ votes.  Which, Jensen has steadfastly claimed, was his singular concern.  Notwithstanding, Lynn Peterson – owner of the Clark Lake group of group homes, from which the residents in question allegedly came – went on a media spree, vigorously upholding the right of disabled people who have not been declared incompetent to vote, a right that nobody involved in this case has questioned in any way.
2. “Monty Jenson is a liar!“: Someone needs to tell Crow Wing County Attorney Don Ryan, who told a Crow Wing County Commission meeting in December that Jensen’s concerns were valid, and the sort of thing a good citizen should do.
3. “The times just don’t add up!“:  There’s no way that Jensen’s complaint could be legitimate, say some, because the times in the various accounts – Jensen’s and the management at Clark Lake – don’t jibe.   But all it will take to scupper that claim is one Clark Lake resident to have been registered to vote, who had been declared incompetent.

And that resident has materialized.  James Stene, a man who suffered serious brain trauma after a near-drowning incident while he was trying to rescue his sister, and who has been judged legally incompetent – claims to have been dragged through the voting process by his staff member.  And he – and his father, Al – made the claim at last night’s Crow Wing County Commission meeting:

There are, of course, lots of new developments to this story.

Eric Shawn of Fox News was in Brainerd over the weekend shooting a story about the allegations of voting fraud in Crow Wing County this past election (previous stories here; the first in the series was this post).  The piece should air sometime in the next 3-4 days.

And we’ll be having Monty Jensen, Al Stene and Ron Kaus of the Minnesota Freedom Council on the Northern Alliance Radio Network this Saturday at 2PM.  Hope you can tune in.

CORRECTIONS: Stene, not Steen.  And I had originally listed Ryan in one place as a Crow Wing County Commissioner; that’s been corrected as well.

Don’t forget – the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Winter Party is coming up soon!

It’ll be Saturday evening, March 26, at Ol’ Mexico in Roseville.

Do us a favor and hit the RSVP page on Facebook, or just drop me a line at “feedbackinthedark”, which is a Yahoo email address.

We’d love to have you there!

Governor Dayton will be the first Minnesota governor since 1999 N not to have a weekly radio show.

The Governor asked for “bids”,  which involved the stations proposing which hour they’d give him – and got responses from WCCO, which carried Ventura and Pawlenty for the past 12 years – as well as KTNF  (the former Air America station), KFAI (a tiny public station on the West Bank in Minneapolis, with a range of maybe five miles) and Rick Kupchella’s “Bring Me The New”, which is largely web-based, but does supply stuff to radio stations).

Most of the stations offered time on the traditional Friday morning/midday shift; WCCO offered an hour early Saturday morning, and the proviso that Ted Mondale co-host. No joke.

Dayton – perhaps not wanting to be on the same day as the Northern Alliance – rejected ’em all:

Dayton’s spokesman, Bob Hume said none of the five offered what the governor was looking for.

“We were very clear that we were looking for a vehicle for people in every corner of the state to have access to the governor,” Hume said. “None of the proposals that we got back gave us that opportunity. So we have decided not to procede with contract negotiations.”

I’m disappointed.  A radio show with Dayton would have been a smorgasbord of material.

HutchTech is laying off a third of its workforce, and moving a chunk of what’s left to…

…newly pro-business Wisconsin.

Coincidence?  Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation.  Technology companies – especially companies that manufacture parts for PCs, which have been cheap commodities for years.

Hutchinson Technology today announced it will shed 30-40% of its workforce in a restructuring move. Hundreds of employees will be laid off from the company’s Hutchinson operation, where many jobs will be moved to Eau Claire, WI and overseas (Star Trib story). While U.S. technology manufacturers have struggled to compete with the influx of foreign competitors, Wisconsin’s new pro-business plans certainly didn’t hurt their chances of attracting the employer across our borders.

But that whole “correlation doesn’t equal causation” bit?  As Andy Post at MDE notes, Mark Dayton could stand to remember it:

Who’s to blame for these lost jobs? You may remember last November when Mark Dayton blamed Governor Tim Pawlenty for job losses at Lockheed Martin. Dayton was quoted saying,“It seems to me this is fundamentally a responsibility of Gov. Pawlenty and his administration,” without any further logic or explanation.

Then, of course, these latest layoffs are fundamentally a responsibility of you, Governor Dayton.

Fair for TPaw, fair for Lord Fauntelroy.

And it is fair.  Because at the margins, people – and companies – expend their resources to save on taxes.

And sometimes that involves shedding jobs – whether it’s because the state is hobbled with a tax-and-spend-crazy DFL legislature, or a tax-and-spend-crazy DFL governor who is dead-set on hamstringing the grownups’ efforts to get the house in order.

In some ways, John “Northside Johnny” Hoff represents the upside of blogging.  He’s found a niche, and he covers it in a way that conventional news reporters just can’t.  Or won’t. In his case, the niche is the mortgage fraud that left a frightening share of North Minneapolis’ homes foreclosed:

I don’t know what fascinates me so much about mortgage fraud. I’m not a victim and I’ve never had a mortgage before. Initially, I was just looking for some houses that might be “damaged goods” because of the fraud, looking for a bargain, but then I got totally into the topic when I saw a role that could be filled digging up info. People give me some kudos for digging up info, but I don’t think it’s such a big deal. I’m just compulsive about it. Once I catch the scent, I just don’t quit, because I love the digging, the solving of a complicated mystery.

In some other ways, ironically, John Hoff may represent the worst of citizen journalism, as I noted back in 2007, when he wrote a piece in the U of M’s Minnesota Daily…:

Maybe it was all the wine my buddy salvaged from some trash containers after a high-class tasting party, and then served up at his own festive blow-out gathering of assorted radicals on Friday night, but I’m really starting to have hope.

Yes, I’m starting to believe certain vague, visionary plans to throw our Republican friends a street party in St. Paul in 2008 are really, truly going to happen.

Look away, you fun-loving Republicans, we’re planning a big surprise party for little ol’ you during your special convention in 2008…Will enough people come to the street demonstrations in 2008? Will it be a gas? Will demonstrators have enough sense to focus on a target of opportunity outside the main security perimeter, like a luxury hotel where delegates will be staying with their laptops and revealing documents, instead of going up against massive security surrounding the convention center? It would be good to apply the hard-earned lessons of Seattle in 1999.

…where he called for not only street violence, but the physical stalking of individual RNC delegates (which, to the best of my knowledge, never happened).

(Note – I‘m not positive that both stories involve the same John Hoff, although the writing styles in the blog and the Daily piece have most of the same written “Tells”.  If it is not the same John Hoff, I’ll promptly correct the story. I don’t think it’s going to be an issue, though UPDATE:  It’s  him).

There’s a little bit of both on display in the “landmark” lawsuit against Hoff, filed by a U of M employee, Jerry Moore.  MPR’s Laura Yuen wrote as complete a coverage of the suit as I’ve seen so far, and who has a pretty concise setup of the backstory:

But what landed him in court is a blog post he wrote in June 2009 after Hoff learned that a former community leader was hired by the University of Minnesota’s Urban Research and Outreach/Engagement Center. On his blog, Hoff accused that man, Jerry Moore, of being involved in a high-profile mortgage fraud case, even though Moore was never charged.

The university fired Moore the next day, according to the lawsuit.

Moore is suing Hoff for defamation.

Now, under Minnesota law, to prove defamation one has to prove four things:

1. That party A said something about party B to one or more Party Cs…:   Where A=Hoff, B=Moore, and C=the public.  Since Hoff publishes on a blog, that’s pretty much a given.
2. …that is untrue, and…
3. …has a reasonable chance of damaging Party B’s livelihood or reputation in the community…:  like, by getting him fired from his job
4. …and if Party B is a public figure, it can be proven that Party A acted with malice: As in “a jury will buy the idea that Party A lied about B, and knew he was lying, because his goal was to do damage to B”.  Minnesota recognizes two classes of “public figures”, by the way; regular “public figures” – elected officials like Mark Dayton, or people who are just plain prominent, like Denny Hecker or Don Shelby or Joe Mauer, and “limited public figures”, people who may not necessarily be famous, but are public within a profession, a community group, a neighborhood, or some other subset of the general population; whatever kind of public figure one is, the burden of proving “malice” is the same.

The real contentions are “did Hoff lie”, and – since the court held that Moore is some form of public figure, did he lie maliciously.

While the backstory to this case looks like a legal chinese fire drill according to Hoff’s own description, Yuen notes that, win or lose, this case might have big implications for bloggers:

Legal experts say the case against John Hoff will be tough to prove. Now that the judge has ruled that Jerry Moore is essentially a public figure, Moore himself bears the burden of proving Hoff acted maliciously. That means he must show Hoff knew his allegations were false, or had reckless disregard for the truth.Hoff says his defense is the truth, and he stands by his blogging.

“I don’t want to get sued,” Hoff said. “Whatever I’m writing, I’m thinking, ‘It better be true. Better be careful.'”

Which is a useful tip for any blogger.

But I strongly suspect (and be advised that I am no lawyer) that this suit is not the one that’s going to be the landmark case about community journalism and media freedom; Hoff merely needs to show that he told the truth – that Moore was involved in mortgage fraud – and not have done anything that jumps up and down and screams “I’m lying and I’m being malicious about it!” (like, say, having sent an email saying “I know I’ve got the wrong facts, and I don’t care, because I’m that angry at you!”, or something equally stupid [1]).

Now – if it turns out Jerry Moore was not involved in any sort of mortgage fraud, and Hoff was dumb enough to leave evidence of malice, there’s really no landmark suit; bloggers should no more be able to lie without consequences about their subjects than the mainstream media.

Jerry Moore’s attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment for this story. In the suit, she argues that John Hoff is not protected by the First Amendment because he does not objectively report the news or have journalistic standards.

That argument perplexes some experts on free speech.

And if the first question isn’t “how did Moore hire such a delusional lawyer”, I’m a leftyblogger’s uncle.

Still, there is a nasty side to these sorts of suits, if not this specific suit: bigger, better-funded people than Moore can use such suits to stifle criticism:

A wide range of similar cases around the country is seeking to clarify free speech issues in a digital landscape…Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University who wrote a book on the Internet and the First Amendment, says he’s concerned about the case against the Minneapolis blogger for what he believes will be a chilling effect.

“Defamation suits are really expensive,” he said. “If we’re going to start seeing more of these suits brought against bloggers, we’re almost naturally are going to see a timidity from bloggers because they don’t want to pay the costs of having to defend the suits, even if they ultimately win the suit in the long run.”

“Johnny Northside”, naturally, is covered:

Blogger John Hoff, however, is not paying for legal representation. News of his defamation suit garnered the attention of a Harvard University group working to protect the rights of online media.

The moral, of course, is tell the truth, and try to leave your more obstreporous emotions – say, malice – out of your blogging.

UPDATE: Ed Kohler has links to a broad swathe of other reporting on the trial.

UPDATE 2:  For those who didn’t get it from my second example above, not everyone is thrilled with John Hoff’s blogging.  No, not at all. Let’s just say there are two sides, at least, to this story.  Also, the people of Grand Forks, about ten years ago, were un-thrilled with his term as a Green Party city councilman.

UPDATE 3: And, naturally, the other side has another side.  And so does that side.

Like I said – many sides to this story.  Bottom line:  keep it factual.

(more…)

Mark Dayton reportedly has a fair chunk of his fortune tied up in a “dynasty” trust in South Dakota.

Why?

Because SoDak is one of 23 states that allow these trusts.

Dynasty trusts push that generation-skipping tax exemption to the max, putting the exempted amount [$5 million for an individual, $10 million for a married couple, which can be stretched further using discounts, life insurance policies and other big-dollar tax-lawyer dodges – Ed.] beyond the reach of estate taxes for the life of the trust. That, in turn, means the heirs don’t have to “spend” their own exemptions on those assets. These trusts are now allowed in 23 states and the District of Columbia (see table), to the delight of companies that charge fees to manage them. Taxpayers don’t have to live in a state to put a trust there.

Mark Dayton – and the other very rich, who get to shelter their fortunes using these trusts, unlike “the rich” that Dayton proposes to extract an almost 11-percent state income tax – may be losing some of this advantage, though, thanks to – the Obama Adminsitration:

To enable these trusts, most of the states allowing them had to get rid of an old common-law principle called the “rule against perpetuities,” which allowed trusts to exist only for about 90 years. The Obama administration proposal would reinstate this old principle in a way by removing the federal tax exemption after 90 years. So the trust can go on indefinitely, but the exemption can’t. (The pass applies to taxes on wealth transfers, of course; annual income taxes are always due.)

So will Mark Dayton be happy to pay for a better USA?

(Via Joe Doakes and Tax Prof Blog)

It’s no secret – I think National Public Radio is a liberal enclave.

So do not a few noted liberals.

Even if I did believe that it was right for government to fund any media, whatever their politics, it wouldn’t be the clubby, sclerotic, gigantistic instition of National Public Radio (or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting).

And there’s some traction for that skepticism in Congress.

And this latest James O’Keefe video won’t help NPR’s case:

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give to $5 million to NPR because, “the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere.”

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Schiller goes on to describe liberals as more intelligent and informed than conservatives. “In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives,” he said.

Watch the video here.

(And I’m waiting for the first lefty apologist to say “it’s only convicted criminal James O’Keefe”.  Go ahead.  Make my day).

For all the barbering over math and science education in this country, we at least have this going for us; kids who really really want a good education in science can find it, eventually, somewhere.  And at least people at all levels are concerned about it.

Social studies, though?  There’s little to no sense of crisis about our kids’ knowledge of our history, culture and government.

There should be.

It’s easy to caricature social studies education.  I’ve remarked – mostly seriously – that in my 20 years of having kids in Saint Paul schools the only things they learned about were slavery and civil rights.  It ‘s not entirely accurate – I remember my stepson having to write papers about the Constitution and Leningrad (different papers, naturally) in ninth grade. But as to my two younger ones?  The “social studies” class Bun took last summer (told here, here,here and here) was only the most caricaturish example.

The bad news?  That was the good news.

More bad news? It’s going to get worse.

Karen Effrem, writing at True North, notes that the state is considering watering the state’s social studies standards down still further:

Tragically, the new draft revision of the social studies standards for Minnesota’s public school students will not help to reverse any of these damaging trends.

In fact, the draft is a giant step backwards. Even a cursory perusal shows that the politically correct, liberal, leftist elites are having a field day. They are not just revising and tweaking, as the less than ideal legislation passed in 2003 allowed, but this is a wholesale leftist revision that should be opposed with great vigor.

How bad is it?

Very, very bad:

The Declaration of Independence that first listed the principles of our republic such as God given unalienable rights and self-evident truth and that served as the cornerstone inspiration for our Constitution, is only mentioned twice and then, not after the fifth grade.

· The draft removes the phrases found in the current standards that are found in the Declaration, such as, “unalienable rights” and “self-evident truth” These were kept in the current standards after much struggle and wrangling with then DFL Senate Education Committee Chairman, Steve Kelley, who infamously said (at 31:09) during that contentious process:

I am not sure it is accurate, legally or historically to call the Declaration of Independence a founding document.

Kelley could have been your governor…

It seems as though there is an effort to make sure that students do not understand that our rights are inherent and God-given and not from government.

Ding ding ding.

It’s in government’s interest for The People to believe it’s the source of all things good.

· Use of the word “liberty” has been decreased from 18 incidents in the current standards to only one in the draft. No longer will it be required that students be taught the meaning and importance of the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as some of our unalienable rights. There is no discussion in the standards about the sacrifices so many have made to preserve that liberty. In fact, words like “valor,” “sacrifice,” and “defense” are not used at all.

In other words, the “America Bad!” mien that kids overwhelmingly get today is going to kick in its turbocharger.

· Similarly, use of the word “freedom” has decreased from 13 times in the current standards to 4 times in the draft, all in relation to only racial freedom and equality. There is no discussion of any other kind of freedom discussed in our Constitution or Bill of Rights, such as religious freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. which are inherent and unalienable, as described in the Declaration of Independence.

Read the whole, depressing, infuriating thing.

And think really hard about calling your legislator.  If it’s one of the smart ones.

The ones that learned their social studies before 1998 or so.

If I were to write an article saying that Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan, Kendra Wilson and Mumford and Sons had been photographed passing around a bottle of Cialis on the Vikings Sex Cruise with Bret Favre and Miley Cyrus, how many hits would it get me?

UPDATE: Mr. D. very correctly points out that I neglected to add a reference to Charlie Sheen’s porn star party.

I regret the oversight.

I predicted it.

I reiterated the prediction.

And, as per usual, it’s happened; the Obama Administration rule fining airlines for keeping passengers waiting on the tarmac over three hours is causing a huge spike in flight cancellations:

A Star-Ledger analysis of federal DOT figures reveals airlines are simply canceling more flights, presumably to avoid idling on the tarmac and exposing themselves to the whopping fines. In fact, the cancellation rate at the nation’s major airports surged 24 percent during the eight months after the rule went into effect.

There is no breakdown by airport, and there was a noticeable spike in cancellations during the wicked December weather. But over the course of the eight-month period, 7,095 more flights were ditched.

Put another way: Nearly 900 more flights a month are being scrubbed..

At 100 passengers per flight, that’s 90,000 a month having to change their plans on the fly – usually with a lot more than three hours’ delay.

“They’ve exchanged inconvenience for a relatively few number of people for an inconvenience for a tremendous number of people,” said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, a passengers advocacy group.

Jennifer Sutherland, 46, a gymnastics coach and Cedar Grove native now living in Clarksville, Ohio, was among the thousands of air travelers whose flights were canceled at Newark Liberty International Airport after the Dec. 26 blizzard. Sutherland has no way of knowing if the tarmac rule came into play in her case, but she was angry that airlines could be canceling flights as an easy, sure way to eliminate their risk of penalties.

“The airlines are saving the massive fines from the tarmac rule and at the same time forcing passengers into the impossible situation of waiting days or weeks to re-book or simply purchase another ticket,” she said.

Unintended consequences…

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.

According to Senator Tom Bakk, the supreme qualification for a legislator is…

…being a career politician.

Not principle.  Not being sent by the voters on a mission to change things.

“Process”.

And all those Republican freshmen in the Senate – men and women who’ve built careers and businesses and lives outside government – are just going to get shredded when Linda Berglin (who’s been in the Legislature since Nixon was president) starts niggling over the finer points of every single Health and Human Service bill.  Or so Tom Bakk thinks.

On second thought, it was as much a Nick Coleman moment as an Oberstar moment.  Bakk is saying “don’t criticize us – we know stuff“.

Amy Koch beat Bakk like a drum:

Money quote:

The freshmen aren’t the problem. They’re just the people who put their families, their jobs and their businesses on hold to come in and be the cleanup crew. If career politiclans were the answer, we wouldn’t be in this mess”

Bakk’s main point – you,  the peasant, even if you are elected to government, just aren’t competent to govern.

British historian Paul Johnson was one of the people who turned me into a conservative.

His seminal Modern Times – The History Of The World From The Twenties Through The Eighties, was instrumental, not only in stomping flat the last shreds of the fabian leftism I grew up with, but showing me the intellectual basis for the American exceptionalism that was such a cornerstone of the Reagan worldview.

If you’re a liberal, he’s not only much, much smarter than you, he’s smarter than your so-called smart guys.  He uses “liberal intellectuals” for firewood.  He picks “thinkers” like Ezra Klein out of his stool in the morning.

And he figures America’s best days are in front of it:

“Of course I worry about America,” he says. “The whole world depends on America ultimately, particularly Britain. And also, I love America—a marvelous country. But in a sense I dont worry about America because I think America has such huge strengths—particularly its freedom of thought and expression—that its going to survive as a top nation for the foreseeable future. And therefore take care of the world.

Pessimists, he points out, have been predicting Americas decline “since the 18th century.” But whenever things are looking bad, America “suddenly produces these wonderful things—like the tea party movement. Thats cheered me up no end. Because its done more for women in politics than anything else—all the feminists? Nuts! Its brought a lot of very clever and quite young women into mainstream politics and got them elected. A very good little movement, that. I like it.” Then he deepens his voice for effect and adds: “And I like that lady—Sarah Palin. Shes great. I like the cut of her jib.”

Just read the whole thing.  Maybe, if you’re a liberal, you’ll convert too…

To: Chris Wallace, Fox News

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Your interview with Shirley Phelps

Mr. Wallace,

As you are aware, debating lawyers is entirely do-able.

I was going to say that debating cultists – as in your interview with Shirley Phelps, daughter of Phred Phelps, and the lawyer who won Westboro Baptist Church’s case at the Supreme Court on the nature, and even contradictions, of their cult theology – is just not.

But then immediately afterwards, watching you flense Dick Durbin, I realized you were just sandbagging.

That is all.

Karen Effrem spoke about Early Childhood Tax Credit Scholarship Bill: HF669 (Loon) / SF331 (Michel), as well as HF273 (Woodard) / SF338 (Nienow)

Kris Jacobson on Ann Neu’s appearance – Chip Cravaack’s campaign manager – for Capitol City Women on March 7 at 7PM.  $10.  It’ll be at Joseph’s Grill – 140 Wabasha St. South.

Last week’s song, “Fleebagging”, from the NARN broadcast:

From the dawn of the nation-state until the confluence of the age of Napoleon and the industrial revolution, warfare was largely a matter of professionals duking it out with other professionals (or natives).

There were exceptions, of course; the American Revolution involved a citizen militia (initially) battling a professional army supported by Loyalist militias.

Napoleon changed all that, conquering most of Europe with an army of draftees (backstopped by his Old Guard and New Guard – like most tyrants from the Caesars to Gaddafi, he kept a special elite as his backup, jujst in case).  The Civil War set the pattern for the other big wars of the following hundred years; mass armies (usually draftees or “national service” men), supported by a mobilization of an industrialized society.  The Franco-Prussian War, World War I and World War II followed the same model – as, in fact, did the Cold War, although the main event of that war never got underway.  Thank God.

But in 1941, Britain’s big, industrialized military was on the ropes.  It had stood off Germany’s invasion attempt the previous summer – barely – but it had left almost all of its best equipment – modern artillery, virtually all of its tanks (that weren’t in North Africa), even its machine guns – on the beaches at Dunkirk the previous June.   British industry was working frantically to replace it – and was buying equipment in the US to help fill the gaps, which would become a big story in coming months.

But in the interim, the gap in the Home Islands was filled by an amazing grab-bag of stopgaps – including arming “Home Guard” men (sort of the British version of the well-regulated militia – civilians who patrolled beaches and landing grounds and such) with everything from quail guns to pikes.

But Churchill wanted to start striking back.  He knew that re-taking the continent in force was out of the question until the Army was re-armed (and, likely, until the US got into the war in a substantial way), so his only real means to hit back at the moment was through a bombing campaign (which was undergoing terrible teething pains), through harrying German coastal shipping with air raids, submarines and torpedo boat attacks…

…and through an idea Churchill had been nursing since his days reporting on the British Army during the Boer War, forty years before in South Africa. There, he’d been impressed by the “Boer” (literally ,Afrikaans for “Farmer”, but used to refer to all Dutch-descended South Africans at the time) troops, citizen militias full of expert marksmen on horseback, loosely organized into groups called “Kommandos” (Afrikaans for “commands”) whose pinprick, hit-and-run raiding so vexed the Brits during that dismal little war.

And so in the aftermath of Dunkirk, Churchill hatched the notion of small groups of highly-trained professionals, who would carry out devastating hit-and-run surprise attacks on German and Italian territory, and christened the new units “Commandos”.

There was no problem getting volunteers; the recruiters for the new units spent the first weeks of the rigorous training, in the craggy, damp, inhospitable Scots Highlands near the town of Achnacarry weeding down the pool of would-be Commandos to the best of the best; men not only adept at infantry fieldcraft and marksmanship, but with the special inner toughness of someone who’ll die before he leaves a job undone.

Commandos on an endurance course cross a creek near Achnacarry

Churchill pushed the idea – but it met considerable resistance from the regular military, who resisted having not only many of their best men, but stocks of scarce equipment and training grounds, absorbed into the new units.  The bureaucratic scuffling carried on through the winter…

…but finally, seventy years ago today, the Commandos got their first workout.   Boarding two fast transports, with an escort of five Brit destroyers, two “Commandos” – British parlance for commando battalions – sailed for the Lofoten Islands, well above the arctic circle off the Norwegian coast near Narvik.  The target – a fish oil factory (German explosive manufacturing used fish oil as part of its process).  The bigger target – a PR victory, showing the world that the Empire could strike back, and showing the British military that the Commandos were for real.

The operation was codenamed “Claymore” The ground commander was Lord Lovat – who would become a legend on D-Day.  But we’ll come back to that in a couple of years.

Landing in the early morning of March 4, 1941, the Commandos achieved complete surprise, and the mission was a complete success.   They destroyed 11 German-held fish oil plants and 800,000 gallons of fish oil, sank five German trawlers and factory ships, and captured the entire 225-man German garrison along with 60 Norwegian Quisling soldiers.  They also brought back 300-odd volunteers for the Norwegian forces in exile.  The only casualty?  A Commando officer who’d shot himself in the leg.

Oil tanks blaze as the Brits withdraw.

One victory was kept very hush-hush, of course.  The Commandos retrieved from one of the German ships a set of rotors from the “Engima” code machine, helping supercharge the hyper-secret process of breaking the “Enigma” code.  Of this, much more soon.

The military victory was small; the PR victory was immense.  The Germans up and down the Atlantic coaast became conscious of the fact that they weren’t safe on the continent (several other raids – by no means always as successful or with casualties so light) followed), causing them to expend a lot of time and manpower guarding against the chance of more such raids.

It was effective in the US as well; as the US was starting to mobilize an immense draftee military, some officers – facing even stiffer bureaucratic resistance than in the UK – eyed the performance of the Commandos, and started pondering the idea of similar units, which led directly to the creation of the first US “Ranger” units after the US entered the war; they trained, initially, alongside the Brits at Achnacarry, on their way to their epic, defining battle at Point Du Hoc on D-Day.  And, thence, to the Airborne Rangers and British Marine Commandos that’ve carried on so much of the War on Terror.

But, again, we’ll return to that.

The DFL loves playing politics more than just about anything else. One of their favorite ploys – using their advantage with the complaint mainstream media to frame all debates in terms that favor them.  Have you  noticed the way the media has, on cue, picked up the meme of the “all cuts budget?”  No significant Republican has used the term – but the DFL and its minions and press enablers use the term every single time the topic of the GOP budget comes up.

Now, in the bad old days when the GOP  was largely RINOs, a little of this framing was enough to help enough “moderates” flake away to help the DFL get pretty much everything it wanted.

Those days are done.  If I have anything to do with it, they’re dead, cremated, and scattered at the foot of Elmer Anderson’s statue.

The DFL hates losing at it more than just about anything else.  Yesterday’s vote on Governor Dayton’s tax proposals was the sort of thing the DFL used to excel at.  Gary Gross gives us a snippet of recent history (that the media would largely prefer disappear down the memory hole:

It’s that the DFL hasn’t stopped playing political games since the session started.

They want nothing to do with Gov. Dayton’s budget. They’re treating it like toxic waste:

One exchange:

Question: “Do you support the tax increases in this bill?”

Thissen: “The governor is delivering on what he promised. We have always been in our DFL caucus in favor of a solution that is going to be fair…We need to look at the details of it. I think the most important thing now to look at is asking the Republicans, okay, what’s your answer.”

Question: “That didn’t answer the question…Do you support these tax increases?”

Bakk: “If you look at the tax incidence study, it will show you that more well to do Minnesotans, especially those over $500,000 in income pay a little bit over eight percent of their income in taxes and the rest of us, in the middle class and lower income Minnesotans, pay about 12.3 percent. And I think from a policy standpoint, the governor is right that everyone should be expect to pay about the same percentage of their income in state and local taxes.”

A third:

Question: “So yes or no. Do you two support the tax package in the governor’s proposal? Yes or no.”

Bakk: “Well, I certainly want to see the budget pages and I’m not going to tell you if they offer a vote on it I’m going to vote yes or no on it because we are actually having a hearing in the tax committee (to delve into the budget) either tomorrow or Thursday…After Thursday I can probably give you an answer.”

That exchange happened on Feb. 15. Sen. Bakk still hasn’t given a reply to Rachel Stassen-Berger. The bottom line is this: the DFL want to criticize Republicans like they do every budget year. They just don’t want their fingerprints on anything that Gov. Dayton has put together.

And the GOP knew it.  Which was the entire motivation behind yesterday’s exercise; the good guys kicked some sand in the DFL’s face.

And they’re used to being the big guys on the beach, dammit!  Not only are they not used to being in the minority – they are not used to a GOP that does politics better than they do!

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius – who presumably has gotten the memo that the GOP’s budget is less than two weeks away, closing in on the DFL like Eisenhower’s fleet weighing anchor and turning toward Normandy, writes:

Instead of putting together their own budget proposal [Hahahaha! – Ed.] the MNGOP has been content to simply snipe at Governor Dayton’s proposal. Today was more of the same. Instead of finally revealing their all-cuts budget, they opted for a sham vote on a portion of Dayton’s budget.

The shorter Rosenberg – “I’m going to give an incomplete-to-the-point-of-dishonesty side of the GOP’s agenda – I’ll carp over one of an entire palette of GOP budget-balancing tactics, the cut, and gabble about the fact that the GOP hasn’t submitted a budget because I can count on the media not to point out that the DFL didn’t submit one until the literal last minutes of the last session – because it’s to my and my party’s political advantage to do so.  But don’t you dare do it yourself!”

Of course, they didn’t vote on Dayton’s entire proposal. Despite Dayton’s frequent objections, the MNGOP continues to treat the budget in a piecemeal fashion. In today’s sham vote, they voted on the tax portion of Dayton’s proposal while ignoring the rest of it.

Dear DFL: we are not here to make you look smart (and either, apparnetly, are many of you).  We are here to win.  The electorate sent the DFL packing, and sent the GOP to the Legislature, with a very clear mandate; kick DFL ass.  Well, no – not “kick DFL ass”, but to get the growth in budget and government under control, which will inseparably involve kicking DFL ass.

And they are.

And yes, compromise is inevitable.  It’s politics. The GOP doesn’t have complete control.  You DFLers are used to a GOP that would get intimidated by your framing, and by your old stranglehold on the media, and essentially fold its cards right after the deal and beg for mercy.

Those days are over.  The GOP is playing to go into those negotiations from a position of strength – not the craven, panicky accomodation of the hamster-like “Republicans” of the Carlson era.  The GOP is playing like it’s holding the full house, Kings over Tens, that it actually holds.

Deal with it.

Or live in the ancient past.  Your choice.

I had no idea that when I  suggested last week that…

…a Republican from a bullet-proof rural seat should sponsor the Dayton budget [and that] the GOP-controlled committees involved should pass it right through, so it can go to the floor immediately for a binding, highly-publicized, up-or-down vote.

I think we should let the DFL show their pride in and support for Governor Dayton.   I think they should show how unified they are!

…I gotta confess, I had no idea it could actually happen.

Yesterday, Senator Michel (a Republican who has taken some flak for being a “moderate” in the past, but who earned plenty o’cred with me) introduced the Dayt0n budget into the Senate.

And the DFL whined like stuck cats.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted 63-1 [yesterday] against Gov. Dayton’s proposal to raise taxes on Minnesota’s richest residents, but Dayton and other Democrats called the debate meaningless theater.

“I’m glad people are having fun,” Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, said sarcastically. “I hope some of your relatives are watching.”

Only Sen. Dave Tomassoni, DFL-Chisholm, voted for the Dayton taxes.

Of course, the DFL has never been above staging up-or-down votes for political purposes – to get Legislators’ votes on  controversial issues on the record for political effect.

They’re just not used to being on the business end of the process.

Don Davis noted:

Dayton sent a letter to Bakk [yesterday] morning urging that all legislators vote against the proposal “as a way to reject this charade.”

Something the media has studiously avoided pointing out; Dayton did this purely to provide political cover for the fact that, had he not excused the DFL caucuses from supporting him, hardly any of them would have.  The DFL’s silence in the Dayton Dustbowl budget plan has been complete; asked if they support it, most prominent DFLers – Thissen and Bakk, among others – have squiggled smartly away.

There is no significant support in the DFL caucus for the Dayton budget.  That’s because in this economic climate, Minnesotans outside the bobbleheaded DFL base know that hiking taxes on the class that creates the jobs, or makes the investments that creates the jobs, is just plain stupid.

The DFL’s response?  Whimpering that “it’s just childish theatre”, and demanding to know when the GOP is going to come out with its budget…

…which was interrupted in mid-whimper with the news that the GOP will have its budget out in two weeks.

All in all, it was a masterful day of politics for the MN GOP.

I haven’t had occasion to say that much in the past 25 years.

It feels good.

More, please.