In A Just World…

…a letter like this’d be popping up any moment now.

———-

To: Minnesota GOP Legislative Caucus
From: Governor Dayton / the DFL Legislative Caucus
Re: Thanks

Our GOP Colleagues,

I know, I know – we call you all sorts of names, we lie about you and your proposals in the press, and we make you endure Ryan “The Pauly Shore of the House” Winkler.  Most of all, we want to spend, spend, spend.  You’re right. It’s a fair cop.

But we gotta give credit where credit is due.   Holding the line on taxes and working to roll back regulations has put the state on a much better fiscal footing than it might have been.  And holding the line on spending, keeping it within the recession-addled revenues we had two years ago, like you did in the 2011 session?

I know, I know – we fought you tooth and nail, and said you hated the children and bla bla bla.   But yep, not only did the February forecast show a surplus, but  revenues are coming in even faster than the forecast thought it would.

So kudos to you, GOP.

Now – could you cut us a break on that whole “paying back the school funding shift” bit?  The treasury’s full of MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY…

…sorry.  I got a little carried away.  Anyway, we’d like to make sure we have single-payer healthcare for pets.  And build a light-rail line from Uptown Minneapolis to Northeast Minneapolis.  And build MPR a new studio, in case their old studio breaks.

Do it for the children.

Sincerely,

The Entire Minnesota DFL

Fortune Favors The Bold

To: The Minnesota GOP Legislative Caucuses
From: Mitch Berg, on behalf of a majority of MN voters
Re: He Who Dares Wins

Dear House and Senate GOP Cauci:

You remember us, right?  After you got your heads handed to you at the polls in 2006 and 2008, losing both chambers, we turned out in droves to put you all back in the majority in both chambers.  We looked at Obamacare’s price tag, and at Mark Dayton’s plans to rifle through our wallets (directly and indirectly), and at the feckless entitled-brat sloth of the ruling DFL supermajority, and your message – govern within our means, where “our means” doesn’t mean “everything we can grab from you” – resonated.

Let’s stress; we did not sent you to Saint Paul because of any special affection for the MNGOP, or because we liked your smiles, or anything of the sort.  It was because you said you were going to make the tough choices, govern like you weren’t there to become part of government, and halt the unchecked growth of Minnesota’s bureaucracy and the government/educational/industrial complex.

And you’ve done a decent job. in many ways – notwithstanding the collapse of the MInnesota Republican Party, naturally.  Reforming taxes, especially business taxes, is huge.  So is Voter ID; in a year, we’ll be a lot less like Chicago than we are now.  That’s all to the good.

But let’s talk about Right to Work.

Minnesota is well down the path Wisconsin was, mortgaging our future to the well-being of the state employees’ unions.  It needs to be stopped.  And you have not only the right bill – the “Right to Work” amendment – but the support of well over 2/3 of Minnesotans, across all political spectra.

Now, rumor has it there are 5-6 of you who are holding out – and the amendment needs three votes to get moving.

We’re going to keep calling the leaderhip – who at the House and Senate are…:

  • Rep. Kurt Zellers – Speaker of the House (rep.kurt.zellers@house.mn / 651-296-5502)
  • Sen. David Senjem – Senate Majority Leader (sen.david.senjem@senate.mn / 651.296.3903)

…but soon, we’ll have to start calling the rest of you.  This has to happen.  There is no excuse not to.

We sent you there to change things.  This is one of the big changes that’s gotta happen. Small business knows it.  Mainstreet knows it.  And judging by the hysteria it’s already provoked, you can bet the DFL knows it.

So let’s do this.

You might just wake up this November and find that the people who put you there, kept you there.

That is all.

Crocodile Sympathy On Wheels

I don’t speed.

I mean, I set my cruise control at the speed limit (unless it’s icy or traction is otherwise bad, naturally), and keep it there.  I’ve never had a speeding ticket; I can figure many things I”d rather spend my money on.

So in a way,, the latest teapot-tempest exercising the Strib editorial board is only of intellectual interest to me; they’re  condemning the idea of allowing people with speeding tickets to pay a premium on their fine to keep their records clean:

Traffic tickets are supposed to serve as both punishment and deterrent for speeding motorists. Unfortunately, a growing number of those lead-foot drivers can buy their way out of trouble.

By paying extra, Minnesotans in some cities can keep speeding violations off of their driving records. Last year, more than 16,000 speeders took that route, according to data compiled for a March 25 Star Tribune story by Pam Louwagie and Glenn Howatt.

That number is alarming. Speed limits exist, not as suggestions, but for public safety.

And, let’s not forget, to try to enforce neighborhoods’ ideas of what life with cars should be like – I’m looking at you, Saint Paul – but that’s splitting hairs.

Here’s the part I thought was hilarious:

The legal system should also be fair in its application of the law. Minnesotans should bristle at any hint of a two-tiered justice system for speeders — one for people who can afford to pay more to make the violation go away, and another for those who can’t.

Now, that all sounds like common sense, doesn’t it?  Our justice system should only have one tier to it – right?

Of course, that’s BS.  The more serious the crime, the more two-tiered our justice system gets.  For anything where you’re getting into misdemeanors and some of the lesser property-crime felonies, among others, the tiers are sharply divided at the point where defendants can afford defense attorneys.  Below that threshold, they get squeezed into plea bargains that may or may not be a good idea (or even accurate – not a few defendants who are perfectly innocent but not wealthy get buried by well-funded county attorneys, and accept plea deals just to end the nightmare, or muddle through the best they can and occasionally get lucky.

But I’m getting ahead of myself just a tad.

Anyway – the Strib isn’t being especially daring in saying that there should just be one tier to our justice system.

Which is fine – except that whenever Mothers Against Drunk Driving wants to ratchet up penalties and wheedle down the limits for drunk driving, the Strib is right on board with the most two-tiered, wealth-friendly law in the land. If you set out to design a explicitly designed to skew the legal system against the poor, you could try to design a system more focused than Minnesota’s “implied consent” law…

….but you’d really be polishing a cannonball if you did.

Worse?  The Strib editorial board was right on board with the rest of the Minnesota DFL’s chanting points bots in trying to ascribe Tom Emmer’s legislation to reform the system as some sort of unseemly payback for his own careless driving arrests, rather than the bipartisan effort to redress this classist inequity that it actually was.

So, Strib – should our justice system always be one-tiered? Or only when a DFLer gets exercised about it?

It’s hard to keep track with you people.

Can’t You Suckers See That It’s Me, Me Me?

Faced with an amendment that will likely pass 2:1 this fall that will also peel off enough fraudulent votes to cost them some of the close elections (like the last Governor and Senate races), the Democrats are turning on the spin.

Emphasis added to this bit here from the MinnPost:

But opponents say it will make voting more difficult for those who don’t have  the right ID, such as seniors who no longer drive, college students, soldiers overseas and homeless people. And they argue that there’s no evidence that voter fraud is a big problem, and that there are laws in place already.

Dave Thul – regional blogger, activist and senior non-commissioned officer – pointed out in the comment section yesterday:

Every member of the US military on active duty is required to have and carry a photo ID. Every member of the military overseas is required to have said photo ID on them at all times.

Also, every US military member has in his or her unit an appointed Voting Assistance Officer, responsible for implementing the DOD directive that every member of the military will have the ability to vote. Voting assistance officers have the same legal authority as a notary public to sign off on a ballot to certify that the voter provided photo ID.

Huh.  I don’t recall anyone in the media checking on that.  Catherine Richert?  You out there?

Another one’s been making the rounds, this time from the MinnPost article linked above, with emphasis added::

…many voters do not realize that it is not just any government-issued (or approved) i.d. they would need to present at their voting place. It will be a special i.d. for voting only and those who want one will have to purchase and present a government-issued birth certificate or perhaps passport in order to get the voter i.d. card. I’m not sure of the current price of a birth certificate, but a passport cost $100 a few years ago.

The Pro-Voter Fraud crowd – the DFL, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Common Cause and so on – are passing this meme around (or at least not saying it’s not wrong; they’re telling the students, the poor, and especially seniors that their driver’s license, state ID or existing passport won’t suffice for voting.

I expect the DFL to start telling that same crowd that Mary Kiffmeyer wants to collect bone marrow samples before voting.  Indeed, expect that previous sentence to pop up on at least one leftyblog.

The Mockery

Dayton issued a “mock” veto of the Voter ID Amendment today:

Governor Dayton has ceremoniously vetoed a proposed constitutional amendment that would require people to present a photo ID to vote. Dayton’s veto won’t prevent the measure from going to the voters in November but he said he’s vetoing the bill because the Legislature sent it to him in bill form.

Well, that and to give the DFL a chanting point to put in front of the same gullible Elmers that put him in office in the first place.  “Well, heck, Ethel, if da Govner vetoed it, I should vote against it, ya?”

“Ya”.

Dayton says the amendment could disenfranchise thousands of voters, including overseas military members and seniors who are unable to drive.

Although those numbers come from Mark Ritchie, who can’t even count real ballots; how good could he be at counting estimates?

Dayton says ending same-day registration and replacing it with a provisional balloting system could lower the state’s nation-leading voter participation.

And that’s the DFL’s most curious chanting point on elections; the idea that we cart more people to the polls than other states, absent any insurance that those votes have any integrity, is just bizarre.  By that measure, the elections in North Korea are the best in the world, since 99+% of North Koreans make it to the polls.

If the ballots themselves have no integrity, the number that get cast is meaningless.

“This amendment is a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Dayton said. “It goes far beyond its purported intention to require photo identification. Instead it dismantled Minnesota’s best in the nation election system…

…which is sort of like the Minnesota Twins’ “Best In The Nation” first series in Baltimore.  Or the Vikings’ “Best In The Nation” 2011 season.  Or the Go-Go football team’s “Best In The Big Ten” record last year.

Marks Dayton and Ritchie are going to turn the phrase “Minnesota’s Best In The Nation…” into a synonym for overweening, malignant mediocrity.

Right To Work: A Time For Choosing

If there’s one issue where the GOP-led Legislature has dropped the ball this session, it’s in letting the “Right To Work” Amendment (henceforth RTW) proposal languish, apparently to die, in committee.

Rumor coming from the Legislature is that the leadership is afraid that the unions will dump a ton of money into Minnesota to fight legislators who support RTW.   The fact is that the unions are facing a full-court press, with RTW legislation or related campaigns (like the Walker recall) going on in more states than ever before; they’re playing whack-a-mole, and while they have a lot of extorted dues money to spend (just less than half on union members are Republicans; about 8% of unions’ political money goes to GOP candidates), they’re spread thinner than ever before; putting one more piece of legislation out there will spread them thinner.

It’s not like the unions aren’t going to go after swing-y candidates in Minnesota – they already co-own the DFL along with Alita Messinger, and they will conduct a merciless, no-holds-barred, no-boundaries-respected smear campaign of every Republican in this state no matter what’s on the ballot this year.  And in a year or two or three?  The DFL and unions will have re-filled their coffers, and have many, many fewer challenges to deal with, for better or worse.

So if not now, when?  If not here, where?

The fact is, according to sources on Capitol Hill, we are three votes shy of passing this thing, and there are six GOP Senate holdouts. 

Leadership can do something about this. I’m going to urge you to contact the leadership of the House and Senate:

  • Rep. Kurt Zellers – Speaker of the House (rep.kurt.zellers@house.mn / 651-296-5502)
  • Sen. David Senjem – Senate Majority Leader (sen.david.senjem@senate.mn / 651.296.3903)

Tell them – politely but firmly – that 2/3 of the people in Minnesota, including liberals, including union members, support this legislation.  And so do you.  And you’re a voter.

Later this week, we’ll start talking about the reported holdouts.

 

Late Breaking News

There’s been a triple shooting in Brooklyn Park:

Police say three adults have been killed at an in-home day care in Brooklyn Park. A search is underway for the suspect.

According to the Department of Human Services, the day care is licensed to handle up to 12 children and is operated by DeLois Brown.

Police are looking for a black male in his mid twenties. He was last seen leaving the area on a BMX bike wearing blue jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt with gray hood and a pair of 1-inch white stripes down the back.

.

No arrests have been made.

Nonetheless, sources tell me the Strib’s Matt McKinney has started hagiographies of all victims (and the still-unknown shooter, just to be safe), and MPR’s Mid-Morning ahem, “Daily Circuit” with Keri Miller has already booked Heather Martens to explain why the shooting is a result of concealed carry and the Stand Your Ground Law (which was vetoed).

Power Ungrabbed

Last Friday, Ramco judge Dale Lindman shot down Mark Dayton’s the SEIU and AFSCME’s big money grap.

It wasn’t even a little bit ambiguous;

Luke Matthews covered the decision at True North:

Judge Lindman didn’t putter around the edges or employ a system of tests.

Lindman went right to the heart of the issue: the authority to conduct an election under Minnesota state law. He boldly stated, “The Minnesota Supreme court has interpreted a labor dispute as involving employer and employee relations.” Without such a relationship, the parties wouldn’t be engaged in a “labor dispute” but in some other kind of dispute.

Game over.

Oh, I’m sure there will be an appeal; AFSCME and the SEIU have deeeeep pockets, and if by some hail-mary they can get Lindman’s injunction ruling and injunction reversed they’ll get a lot deeper.

Matthews goes through a bit of the genesis of this case – one where every single conservative commentator and every daycare provider I talked with (and all by a tiny shaving of those I heard or read) knew from the beginning that the claimed “employer/employee relationship” was bogus?

So, where did Dayton get his odd phrase of “regardless of whether there is an employer or employee relationship?” It was found in the BMS statute.

The union thugs, through Dayton’s order, twisted the meaning of the statute in question. The text of the statute is, “regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.” Proximate relationship of employer and employee probably refers to the legal definition of two parties. It allows that people outside the standard tax definition of employer/employee may have a labor dispute and the BMS can mediate it. Just because they are contract workers and therefore technically not “employees” of a company, it could be a labor dispute. Even if a holding company wasn’t technically an employer of certain workers, it could still be deemed a labor dispute.

The union bosses and their pet pony Dayton tried to use the language to create a new power for the BMS. This would give Dayton’s union allies some truly broad latitude.

And that latitude was, had it become law, potentially even more drastic than the perversions of the Commerce Clause starting during the Roosevelt administration.  Under Dayton’s the SEIU and AFSCME’s version of the law, anyone who receives any aid, no matter how indirectly, from the government, is a government employee.

Daycare workers, some of whom participate in government food assistance programs for low-income clients, and some of whose clients themselves are on assistance, including daycare assistance?  Notwithstanding the fact that the parents are the “employers” and the daycare providers are (very) technically their employees (really service providers, but work with me here), the daycare providers would be “government employees” for purposes of…

…of what?

Being “represented” by government-workers unions.

How far does this get taken?

Are auto mechanics “government employees”, and liable for AFSCME dues, because the cars they repair wouldn’t get far without government roads?

Are the employees of very grocery store that accepts WIC, EBT and food assistance “government employees”?  Do employees of every clinic that takes Medicare and Medicaid payments de facto dues-paying AFSCME members?  (Wait – Obamacare means they will be, sooner or later.  Strike that).

Do Ed and I qualify as “federal employees” – or at least federal union dues-payers – because our radio station operates on a wavelength administered by the FCC?

Never thought I’d compliment a Ramco judge on his, well, judgment.  But kudos, Judge Lindman.

NBC: “Curing Root Rot By Trimming Leaves”

NBC identified and whacked a fall guy for the fraudulent, narrative-based editing of the George Zimmerman 911 call we talked about last week.

NBC News has fired the producer it deemed most responsible for the airing of a selectively edited 911 call placed by George Zimmerman the night he killed Trayvon Martin.

Sources at NBC who asked not to be identified confirmed a New York Times story saying that a Miami-based producer was fired Thursday, though the sources refused to identify the former employee.

In the original 911 call, Zimmerman is heard describing Martin as such: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

The dispatcher then asks: “OK, and this guy – is he white, black or Hispanic?”

“He looks black,” Zimmerman responds.

The version NBC ran, though, was much shorter and did not include the question posed by the 911 operator.

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,”

In other words, the producer who let the narrativizing of the news slip out too clumsily was sacked.  The executives whose policy “narrative-based news) actually is are still being chauffeured around New York.

This Is Your “Obama Recovery”: April Edition

Last week’s BLS numbers were worse, naturally, than the media let on.

Unemployment was “down” to 8.2% – after moving at 8.3 for a few months.  But remember, that percentage is against the “Labor Force Participation Rate”.

And that rate stands at 63.8%.

So you lop 8.2% off of that figure, and you get a grand dotal of 58.57% of the workforce actually working.

By way of comparison – in October of 2009, when the official unemployment rate was 10%, the participation rate was an even 65%, and 58.5% of the workforce was working.  The actual employment rate bottomed out at 58.2%, back in December of 2009.  That means that in terms of Americans working, we’re about a third of a percent better than the lowest point in the recession.

When Barack Obama was inaugurated, 60.58% of the workforce was working. That is over two points higher than it was last month.

The administration and media will try to spin these numbers as “recovery, with work to do”.

The truth is, in terms of Americans working, there is no recovery at all.

For nostalgia buffs?  The low point in the Bush Administration was 61% – half a point higher than the best Obama rate.  The high point was 63.5.

You Are The Editor

One of this blog’s more consistently popular long-running features is my “Climate of Hate” page, in which I keep a running tally of episodes of liberals exercising their hatred of conservatives, usually via violence.  I started it at the height of the liberal media’s obsession with trying to find and pin an example of violence –any violence, any violence at all – on the Tea Party, to underscore the invariable accuracy of Berg’s  Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds“.   And there are a lot of misdeeds.

And as we sift through the collapse of the media’s concerted, deliberate effort to frame the Martin case as a racial hate crime (and armed self-defense as a disaster, just to keep white liberals interested in the death of a black kid), it occurs to me – we need a similar feature for Media Witch Hunts.

What I”m looking for is cases where the media arrived at a conclusion prejudicial to some conservative institution or belief, looooong before the facts warranted it.  Especially if the facts were completely at odds with the conclusion.

It’s too early to say with the Martin case – but a few other examples pop to mind:

  • The Duke Lacrosse Team case.  Not that rich lacrosse players are a “conservative institution”, but the case had a political side too…
  • Tawanna Brawley
  • The 35W Bridge Collapse, which a good chunk of the Twin Cities media tried to politicize before actual engineering set in.
  • Anthropogenic Global Warming
  • The Burkett Papers / Sixty Minutes piece about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard record.
  • The Evanovich Shooting.  The Twin Cities media lionized the “victim” before they had to admit (quietly) that he was a thug.
Do you remember more?  Leave ’em in the comment section.  Links are appreciated but not necessary.

I think I’ll call it “The Conservative Is Obviously Guilty”.

Here’s A Flashback For You

Remember back in 2008, when liberals would stare all starry-eyed into space with that look teenagers used to get when Leif Garrett or Nick Carter appeared in Tiger Beat: “Oooh, Barack Obama was a constitutional lawyer!  That’s an ideal background for a President!”

At best, it’s irrelevant; a President needs to know about as much about Constitutional Law as a good cop does.  He’s got people for the complicated stuff.

At worst?  It’s one of the worst possible backgrounds for a President; the last think you want to do is turn lawyers loose around the law with nearly unlimited power.

Thom Lambert – a lawyer and former law student of President Obama – knows better:

Imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read that one of your astronomy professors had publicly questioned whether the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun. Or suppose that one of your economics professors was quoted as saying that consumers would purchase more gasoline if the price would simply rise. Or maybe your high school math teacher was publicly insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. You’d be a little embarrassed, right? You’d worry that your colleagues and friends might begin to question your astronomical, economic, or mathematical literacy.

(That’s one of the things I always wondered about people who went to law schools or “elite” universities; the idea that the institution one attends defines one’s personality, or indeed personhood.  To the extent it does, it’s in the sense of say “Hey, look at me, I went to Cornell, Go Tigers” – or, for that matter, “I’m qualified for a job because I went to an Ivy League school” – at in appropriate times).

(But I digress).

Now you know how I felt this morning when I read in the Wall Street Journal that my own constitutional law professor had stated that it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the Supreme Court to “overturn[] a law [i.e., the Affordable Care Act] that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Putting aside the “strong majority” nonsense (the deeply unpopular Affordable Care Act got through the Senate with the minimum number of votes needed to survive a filibuster and passed 219-212 in the House), saying that it would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to strike down a law that violates the Constitution is like saying that Kansas City is the capital of Kansas.

The Democrats, presiding as they have over four years of rot and decay, have switched to the “say what you’d like the truth to be and hope people buy it” school of public relations.  History shows it’s not a bad choice, albeit it’s still wrong…

Thus, a Wall Street Journal editorial queried this about the President who “famously taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago”: “[D]id he somehow not teach the historic case of Marbury v. Madison?”

I actually know the answer to that question. It’s no (well, technically yes…he didn’t). President Obama taught “Con Law III” at Chicago. Judicial review, federalism, the separation of powers — the old “structural Constitution” stuff — is covered in “Con Law I” (or at least it was when I was a student). Con Law III covers the Fourteenth Amendment. (Oddly enough, Prof. Obama didn’t seem too concerned about “an unelected group of people” overturning a “duly constituted and passed law” when we were discussing all those famous Fourteenth Amendment cases – Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Romer v. Evans, etc.) Of course, even a Con Law professor focusing on the Bill of Rights should know that the principle of judicial review has been alive and well since 1803, so I still feel like my educational credentials have been tarnished a bit by the President’s “unprecedented, extraordinary” remarks.

Read the whole thing.

And then get a friend to come out to the polls to vote The Light Worker out of office this fall.

Black Panthers

Although I’ve been waiting on the anniversary for almost a year, it almost passed by me without enough time to write about it; Sunday was the seventieth anniversary of the forming of the 761st Tank Battalion of the US Army.

As divided as racial politics in America are today, they were of course much worse in 1942, at the very nadir of the Depression-era Jim Crow south.  The US military was intensely segregated – there were those who didn’t even want to go that far, believing that blacks didn’t have the intelligence to train or the courage to fight (notwithstanding the long combat record of black troops in the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Indian Wars).

Almost worse?  As a “compromise”, the chief of Army personnel matters, General Robert E. Lee (no, I’m not making that up) decided that black units should be formed, mostly for labor and support duties – and those units should be led by white officers from the deep south, since they had the most experience dealing with African-Americans.

Not everyone agreed, of course; reformers believed that blacks should have the same right to fight for this country as any other citizen.  One of their supporters was General Leslie McNair – an officer who had many sweeping impacts on the US Army during the war, most not nearly as positive (we looked at the first of them last year).  McNair and his reformers had a powerful supporter – First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.  And the First Lady exerted her considerable political force on the Army, which grudgingly agreed to start forming combat units.

Including the 761st Tank Battalion.

The unit was formed at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana.

We’ll come back to them in a bit.

“Did He Say The Media Is Disingenuous, Or Disgusting?”

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s revelation that NBC altnered the tape of George Zimmerman’s 911 call to bump up the “Racist” factor comes the news that Zimmerman didn’t say “It’s a f****ng coon”, but rather “It’s f***ng cold“.

CNN cleaned up the audio from the 911 call.  I took a listen to it.  While some quibble, it seemed pretty clear to me that Zimmerman was saying it was “f****ng cold”.  You be the judge.

If that’s the case – and I believe it is – then what we have here is a case of the media (aka “Obama’s Praetorian Guard”) committing a series of calculated lies, or at least making a curiously congruent set of unwarranted assumptions, that might not have been carefully designed to whip up racial tensions on the part of blacks (to draw their attention away from their catastrophic unemployment rate under Obama) and against civilian gun ownership (so as to make white liberals like “Spotty“, among many others, care about just another dead black kid) – but it’s hard to see how events and news would have unfolded differently if they had been trying.

We saw all of this here in the Twin Cities last fall with the Evanovich case; until Mike Freeman, the Henco prosecutor, exonerated the shooter, the local media was doing its absolute level best to whip up exactly the same combination of racial and anti-gun frenzy.

I was going to invoke Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”  But it doesn’t completely appliy.  It’s actually a contender to be a corollary to Berg Seven, if not a law unto itself:

Any time the liberal media (to say nothing of leftyblogs) “reports” on guns or race, they should be distrusted but verified.  And then, almost invariably, distrusted some more“.

I lost count of the cases in point decades ago.

Use That Hope And Change To Pay Those Loans

Unemployment among college graduates is higher than the national average:

In the [latest issue of Consumer Reports] I received today, the first thing that I noticed was how student debt can have an impact on the entire economy. That’s pretty much common knowledge but one large factoid that stood out in one of the “Did you know?” boxes was “9.1 %: That’s the unemployment rate for young college graduates in 2010, the highest annual rate on record, says “The Institute for College Access & Success.” 9.1% is a higher unemployment rate than the overall rate.

Naturally, news industry polling shows that college-age kids still support Obama.

Must be all that contraception.

Well, There’s Great News

After a thirty-year-break, Egypt is back in the “Trying To Wipe Israel Off The Map” business:

A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.

District police chief Ron Gertner told Israeli radio the rocket had been fired from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

He said it struck a construction site close to a residential area shortly after midnight (21:00 GMT).

To be fair, we don’t know that the new Egyptian “government” (blessed by Tea-Party-haters and Occupiers throughout the US!) is behind this.

To be honest, we don’t entirely know that some faction of the newly-factionalized government isn’t, either.

Thanks for all that standing around the world, Mr. President!

Fake But Accurate, Chapter MMMCXXXIX

NBC’s editing of George Zimmerman’s 911 call just happened to make his statement sound frothingly racist.

Here’s what Today show listeners heard:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

Here’s what he actually said:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Got that?

The editing changed Zimmerman’s statement from an answer to a dispather’s request for information  into an affirmatively racist statement.

Erik Wemple at the WaPo:

No matter how you feel about Zimmerman, that bit of tape editing was unfair to the truth and to Zimmerman’s reputation, such as it is. Reaction on Twitter and elsewhere to my previous post on this matter, was brutal toward NBC, with many comments suggesting the worst about the network’s motivations, reliability and so on.

And why might that be?

Because every editing “flub”, every “fake but accurate” story that gets past the “layers and layers of gatekeepers”, just happens to defame someone liberals want defamed?

Nah, it must be us.

NBC “apologized”:

During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.

Read: “The damage we wanted done is done; the Democrat / media (ptr) narrative was served.  We’ll try to be more artful in our slander next time, so as not to get caught”.

Bias?  What bias?

You Don’t Like Those Numbers? We’ll Keep Making Them Up ‘Til You Do!

There used to be firearms ranges in the Twin Cities – places where shooters could go and practice and, perhaps more importantly, teach the kids how to handle and, even moreso, how not to handle guns.

Metro-area DFL governments have pretty much squeezed out all the ranges within 20 miles of the Twin Cities proper.  Today, with the exception of Bill’s Gun Range in Robbinsdale, you have to drive to Burnsville, Lakeville, Blaine and such (along with a private club in Oakdale with some public shooting hours) to find a public range.

Not a few of those old ranges – Braemar in Edina, for example – were absorbed by Twin Cities law enforcement; they became ranges for cops.  They’re maintained at public expense.  And while cops need plenty of practice with their firearms, it’s not like the ranges are hopping 24/7.  There’s slack time (not that the cops shouldn’t get some more practice yet).  And since the public is paying for that unoccupied time, why not give the public access to the ranges they pay for?  If only for the safety instruction that, statistically, saves vastly more lives than any gun control measure?

And so Tom Hackbarth sponsored a bill that’d open up ranges to the public for firearm safety instruction.

And the bill was debated for an hour yesterday.

And during that debate, Assistant Minority Leader Kim Norton claimed that it would cost either $500,000 or $1,000,000 to convert these ranges for public use; according to various accounts, either Norton raised the figure in mid-debate, or a metro DFLer did.

That’s right – in the special little world of the DFL, you need to convert a range (which was a public range, in the case of Braemar among others) to handle civilian bullets.

Clearly the Sheriff’s Association wants this bill killed.  Public ranges aren’t for the public after all.

And if you’re a parent in North Minneapolis or Frogtown who wants to teach your kids gun safety?  You gotta drive and drive and drive and pay and pay and pay.

Because the DFL doesn’t want all those pesky brown-skinned people to know how to handle guns.

Overpolled

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Got a phone call last night from a young-sounding woman who said she was calling from San Jose University doing a survey of public opinion about transportation.

She started out asking about the sorry condition of streets and highways in my area (which are, indeed, sorry). After the first three questions, it was clear to me that the agenda was not to fix streets but to find support for mass transit. Once I realized that, I altered my answers accordingly.

For example, in response to “Would you favor government initiatives to reduce traffic congestion?” I normally would have said “Strongly Agree” because the freeways are parking lots during rush hour. Instead I said “Strongly Oppose – because I know that by “reduce traffic congestion” you mean to take away my car and stuff me into a bus rather than build more lane miles.”

You have to watch out for these questions; they lead to polls that groups like the Met Council flog saying “there’s overwhelming support for transit!”.

There were several “educational” questions that told me how little the federal government spent on transportation now and would I favor spending more; and told me how low the federal gas tax is now and how little extra I’d pay if Congress raised the gas tax. “Strongly oppose – because I know Congress will divert the gas tax money to pay for Light Rail, just as they did in Minnesota.”

There was no opportunity to say “There is no Constitutional authority for Congress to spend money on transportation, it’s a purely local issue to be addressed by states and cities” nor to say “In 15 years, debt service on the national debt alone will exceed federal tax receipts and will bankrupt the country so more federal spending is madness.”

Alas.

I even answered the age, education and income questions, figuring why not. No doubt the poll results will show massive support for increased Congressional spending on mass transit among all except a tiny handful of privileged White skinflints.

Hey – I’m now the 1%!

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Most conservatives are – provided you’re measuring “people who think”.

Sara Tiedeman

Sara Tiedeman has passed away.

She and her husband, PR guru Chris Tiedeman, were gravely injured in a collision with a drunk driver last month.  Sara’s prognosis was dire from the beginning, according to a source close to the Tiedemans, but we all hoped and prayed that every day she hung on was a day closer to turning the corner.

Chris has been recovering well.

Please direct your thoughts and prayers toward Chris and the rest of their families.

The Lori Sturdevant Column I’m Looking Forward To Seeing

“Senator John Harrington remembers a time when the DFL had to try to represent both sides, and be responsible”.

“”There was a time in Saint Paul DFL politics when, yes, there was ideology, but you had to remember you were representing ALL of the people in your district“, Harrington told me over coffee at a favorite East Side hangout on Lexington yesterday”.

“Harrington was reeling from his non-endorsement at his Senate District convention last weekend, where extreme liberal zealots, acting more from partisanship than concern for what was best for the district, split their vote three ways, denying Harrington the endorsement”.

“This is an unseemly commentary on Minnesota politics today, where the DFL is running for the extreme left in a way that, to this reporter, seems “Un-Minnesotan”.

“What would Hubert H. Humphrey say?”

Shorting The Tab

At this blog (and much moreso at Gary Gross’ Let Freedom Ring and Mr. D’s eponymous Neighborhood), we’ve been trying to unpack the fabrications behind the Dayton / Bakk stadium proposal – including the fantasy that electronic pull tabs are going to cover the state’s contribution.

One thing I haven’t done is look into what the team supposedly contributes in terms of taxes.

Paul Udstrand at Thoughtful Bastards has, though:

According to [MinnPost’s Joe Kimball] a group going by the name: “Home Team Advanage” has issued a “report” claiming that MN stands to loose $533 million dollars if the Vikings leave the state. HTA claims that the Vikings have generated $320 million in sales tax revenue, and $360 in income tax revenue from Vikings players since 1982.

There’s really no way to avoid the conclusion that these numbers are flat out distortions and fabrications. The $320 million figure comes from a 2009 RSM McGradrey report that was commissioned the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission. I’ve excerpted the relevant table and provided it below:

Udstrand includes a bit of spreadsheetery:

Spreadsheet courtesy the thoughtful bastards at "Thoughtful Bastards", where it's probably much easier to read.

As you can see, the tax contributions since the Metrodome opened are listed in columns starting with the Twins. If you look at the totals you see that the Vikings total has been $166,514,612. So where does HTA get the $320? Notice the total for ALL sports in the very last column is $319,306,727. HTA rounded it (wrongly) up to $320. In other words they almost doubled amount the Vikings have paid by included ALL taxes generated by ALL pro sports activity. The actual vikings contribution once you subtract personal income tax is $52 million. I find it hard to believe a bunch of business boys can’t read a basic spreadsheet so one has to suspect this is NOT an innocent mistake. At best it’s beyond sloppy research.

HTA also claims that the Vikings pay $20 million a year in state income taxes. The actual figure for 2010 was $12 million.

There’s much more.  I’ll urge you to read the whole thing.

And then remember that every single portion of the Dayton / Bakk stadium plan fails to add up – the City of Minneapolis’ contribution, the expected doubling in gambling revenue, or the projected benefits.

Nothing!

Reframing

Judicial Activisim.

To a conservative, it’s writing new law from the bench.

To a liberal / neosocialist?  It’s upholding the Constitution.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

President Obama said:

“And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example, and I’m pretty confident this court will recognize that and not take that step.”

Judicial activism. You keep using that phrase. I don’t think it means what you think it means.

Which is true.  But the real point is, just watch; this’ll be the opening salvo of an effort by the Administration, Media Matters and the left and media (ptr) to reframe “Judicial Activism” as a synonym for “Originalism”.