They’re baaaaaaack:

House Public Safety Committee Chairman Michael Paymar, a long-time anti-gun advocate, plans to hold committee hearings on his gun control proposals beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, February 5 through Thursday, February 7 in State Office Building Room 10.

The Metrocrats – as opposed to the outstate DFLers – certainly think they smell blood in the water; this is the first time in I think 15 years they’ve seriously considered broaching new victim disarmament legislation.

The press release – from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – notes:

At this time, none of his gun control legislation has been introduced. However, the NRA understands that Paymar’s gun control bills will likely be introduced later this week or early next week and include, at a minimum, the following attacks on our Second Amendment rights:

Paymar’s proposal hits the usual boogeymen:

• A proposed ban on Ugly Guns:  Paymar would ban firearms with scary military-looking cosmetic features
• Big Magazines: Paymar would force spree killers to carry 2-3 times as many magazines as they do before going on a shooting spree (and force law-abiding homeowners and citizens to reload 2-3 times as often if they are beset by determined, dissociative or chemically motivated attackers).
• Private Transfers:  While even some Second Amendment people think this – requiring all purchases to go through a federally-licensed firearms dealer (FFL), to close the non-existant “gun show loophole” – thinks this doesn’t sound too noxious on the surface, its byproduct -a paper trail for all guns – makes the next step, universal registration, trivially easy.

All three are, of course, utterly useless for curbing any kind of crime.  That’s why the proper term for such measures is Victim Disarmament, not “Gun Control”.

And at first blush, it looks grim:  the Public Safety Committee is 10 DFLers and 8 Republicans.
But there’s more to it than that.

So Here’s What Real Americans Need To Do

There are three real factions on the Democrat-controlled House Public Safety Committee

The first is the Republicans.  They all should get a call – especially if you are one of their constituents – to encourage them to stand up for what’s right, and thank them (if applicable) for their past support.

Representative Tony Cornish (R) – Republican Lead: 651-296-4240
E-mail: rep.tony.cornish@house.mn

Representative Debra Hilstrom (DFL): 651-296-3709
E-mail: rep.debra.hilstrom@house.mn

Representative Brian Johnson (R): 651-296-4346
E-mail: rep.brian.johnson@house.mn

Representative Tim Kelly (R): 651-296-8635
E-mail: rep.tim.kelly@house.mn

Representative Jim Newberger (R): 651-296-2451
E-mail: rep.jim.newberger@house.mn

Representative Andrea Kieffer (R): 651-296-1147
E-mail: rep.andrea.kieffer@house.mn

Representative Kathy Lohmer (R): 651-296-4244
E-mail: rep.kathy.lohmer@house.mn

Representative Mark Uglem (R): 651-296-5513
E-mail: rep.mark.uglem@house.mn

The next faction is the Metrocrats.  They’re mostly hopeless; they’re in office because Alida Messinger and her liberal plutocrat friends paid good money, and lots of it, for a bleeding-heart knee-jerk liberal government with all the baggage it brings.  Victim Disarmament, to these people, is not negotiable.

If you’re a constituent, of course, a phone call wouldn’t hurt; they need to know that their opposition is everywhere.  And a quick reminder of what bills like theirs did to the DFL in 1994 and 2002 might not hurt, either.

Representative Michael Paymar (DFL) – Chairman: 651-296-4199
E-mail: rep.michael.paymar@house.mn

Representative John Lesch (DFL): 651-296-4224
E-mail: rep.john.lesch@house.mn

Representative Joe Mullery (DFL): 651-296-4262
E-mail: rep.joe.mullery@house.mn

Representative Steve Simon (DFL): 651-296-9889
E-mail: rep.steve.simon@house.mn

Representative Erik Simonson (DFL): 651-296-4246
E-mail: rep.erik.simonson@house.mn

Representative Linda Slocum (DFL): 651-296-7158
E-mail: rep.linda.slocum@house.mn

Representative Dan Schoen (DFL): 651-296-4342
E-mail: rep.dan.schoen@house.mn

So when you break the committee down, it’s actually 8 Real Americans to 7 Orcs.

But here’s the important part:

Representative Paul Rosenthal (DFL) – Vice Chairman: 651-296-7803
E-mail: rep.paul.rosenthal@house.mn

Representative Shannon Savick (DFL): 651-296-8216
E-mail: rep.shannon.savick@house.mn

Representative John Ward (DFL): 651-296-4333
E-mail: rep.john.ward@house.mn

UPDATE:  As Colonel Flagg noted in the comments, let’s add:

Representative Erik Simonson (DFL): 651-296-4246
E-mail: rep.erik.simonson@house.mn

That’s two DFLers – Savick and Ward – from outstate districts that are chock full of Real Americans, both independent and DFL as well as GOP, who take the Second Amendment seriously, the very type of DFLers that were mowed down in droves in 2002 unless they broke with the Metrocrats.

And Rosenthal, who won on a one-time surge of DFL voters in a very purple district, who can’t afford to take Real American votes for granted in the much-more-normal year coming up in 2014.

And a polite, reasoned phone call reminding them that there are a lot of us out there in both parties who take our Second Amendment civil rights seriously, as well as those history lessons from 1994 and 2002, might just go a long way toward euthanizing Paymar’s authoritarian dabbling in its crib where it belongs.

Any questions?

Your mission is clear.

Over this past six weeks of fairly constant writing about Second Amendment issues, it’s occurred to me that I’ve been letting the Orcs drive the discussion by controlling the language involved.

It’s time to roll that back with extreme prejudice.

So from now on on this blog and in all personal and public discourse on the matter, the following terms shall be used, with the following meanings:

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Kansas is a  right to work state.    Michigan is not.

GM plans $600M upgrade at Kansas City plant while Detroit edges closer to bankruptcy.

Just a coincidence, no doubt.  And easily avoidable under the principles of Obama-nomics:

“Detroit Council Member JoAnn Watson, who along with two other members of the city’s all-black City Council has been resisting reform measures, said she is still hopeful of a federal bailout or an injection of state money that she claims the city is owed.”

Coming soon to a location near you?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

If Moses had been a liberal, he’d still be waiting for the Coast Guard to part the Red Sea.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Science has spoken.  We must ban divorce, for the future health of the children.

You’re not a science denier, are you?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Silly Doakes.

Here’s a question for our DFLer friends.

Back from the 1890’s through maybe the 1930’s, farming had a radical fringe; the “Granger” and “Prairie Populist” and “Non-Partisan League” movements back in the Dakotas still have their political vestiges.

And the presence of an “F” in “DFL” – “Democrat Farmer Labor” party – is another vestige of an era when farming had a radical element.  The “Farmer Labor” party of Floyd Olson and the other softcore socialists of the twenties through the forties was a serious force in Minnesota politics.

But that was eighty years ago.  Since then, farmers have been among the most conservative people in our society.  The “Red States” are stereotypically (and misleadingly) seen as agrarian, and the conservatism of the ag sector (once you leave out the deeply interventionist farm bills) is legendary.

Here in Minnesota it’s the farming areas of this state that are among the most conservative and Republican.  Oh, Collin Peterson is a blue-dog holdover from an era when there wasn’t much to distinguish a Republican and a Democrat in Minnesota, a pro-NRA, nominally pro-life Democrat whose politics are less important than the fact that he has the seniority it takes to deliver the farm-bill pork.  And Tim Walz down in the First makes just enough social-conservative noises to keep from alarming the farmers in his district, without unduly alarming his base of power, Austin union members,  the Mankato college crowd and Rochester’s new urban-hanger-on set.

But other than the utterly bipartisan pursuit of farm-bill pork, I’ve gotta figure support for the DFL – especially its Twin Cities metrocrat focuses – has got to be very, very low among actual farmers.  And it’s for sure that while Labor is a huge constituency in the DFL, I’m at a loss to remember seeing any signs of a “farm” caucus at a DFL convention.

So maybe it’s time for the DFL to change its name in the interest of accuracy?

Maybe to the “Democrat-Oligarch-Labor-Education” party?

I’m here to help.

Emboldened by Betty McCollum’s plaintive cry for a “dialog”, I met my DFLer friend, AVERY LIBRELLE.  Avery was just coming out of point-chanting practice at the Union building in downtown Saint Paul; we decided to have a dialog over a drink or two at the St. Paul Hotel.

MITCH:  OK, a dialog about guns.  OK, I’ll start by pre-empting one inevitable strawman; there are gun controls that actually reduce crime.  They include keeping guns out of the hands of felons, and ramping up the sentences for gun crimes.  They’re the measures the “Gun Lobby”, including but not limited to the NRA, have worked for.  And they’ve worked.

LIBRELLE:  The NRA is a terrorist group.

MITCH:  Um…well, no.  It’s an industry and hobby group that does some lobbying.

LIBRELLE:  They are owned by the gun industry.

MITCH:  The firearms industry certainly donates money to the NRA, since they are the biggest, baddest group fighting for their right to do business.  They have the right to do that.  But the NRA has always been one of America’s biggest grass-roots organizations.  And it’s only getting bigger; it’s up 500,000 in the past six weeks.  And that’s people who pay $35, at least, for a year; not a ton of money, but not inconsiderable in these tough times, either.  And that’s up from 3 million in 1990.

LIBRELLE:  Guns are out of control!
MITCH:  Er, no.  Violent crime is steadily falling, even as the number of guns in society approaches one for every American.  Gun crimes are down nearly 50% in the past 20 years, along with crime in general.  And the NRA worked with sensible politicians on both sides of the aisle to make that happen.    In other words, the NRA has always supported gun controls that actually work – by attacking criminals, not the law-abiding.
LIBRELLE:  But mass shootings are out of control!

MITCH:  Well, no – media coverage notwithstanding, they’re actually less common than they were 20 years ago.  In fact, the worst year for mass shootings was…1929.

LIBRELLE:  But we have to dooooooo something.

MITCH:  We’ve done something.  It’s been working.  It’s just that we haven’t done the “something” that our media establishment and its’ left-of-center political benefactors want.
 LIBRELLE:  We have to control guns.  Period.

MITCH:  Did you just use “Period” to try to prove a point?

LIBRELLE:  Guns are out of control.

MITCH:  Er, where do you get this?

LIBRELLE:  You’re crazy.

MITCH:  Um – what now?  We’re having a dialog, right?  And yet all you’ve done is recite chanting points and long-debunked stats.

LIBRELLE:  I bet you’re compensating for something.  If you know what I mean.

MITCH:  Yep.  Compensating for the fact that there is evil in this world, yadda yadda.

LIBRELLE: You’re just a cranky middle-aged bald white guy.

MITCH:  And the last I checked the Constitution applies to us too.  So – do you have any actual facts to bring to this “dialog?”

LIBRELLE:  The NRA are fascists.

MITCH:  So in response to decades of patiently-assembled facts that support my case, you have ad-homina and chanting points?

LIBRELLE:  You’re cray-cray.

MITCH:  That’s not, technically, “dialog”.

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate children.

MITCH:  This isn’t dialog.  This is me debating, you trying to trash me.

LIBRELLE:  Now you’re having a melt-down.

MITCH:  Don’t flatter yourself.

LIBRELLE:  I should wear a flak jacket.  You may try to kill me.

MITCH:  That’s nuts.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, now you’re attacking me personally!  There’s no way to have a dialog with you gun nuts!

(And SCENE)

In her column over the weekend, the Strib’s Lori Sturdevant does what she’s paid to do; paint the DFL’s toenails.

Yesterday, we noted the highly selective set of “facts” she used to praise Governor Messinger’s Dayton’s budget proposal.

Sturdevant’s column echoed the DFL’s current regimen of happy talk for the people, in obligingly noting that the current plan cuts the sales tax from 6.874% to 5.5% (before the local taxes that your city, like mine, may have larded on top of it all) while extending the sales tax to other goods and services.

Lots of other goods and services.

The DFL has to “Pay” for a half a billion dollar pay-off to renters, as well as a shopping list of goodies for Governor Messinger’s Dayton’s other lienholders constituents.

What Sturdevant doesn’t tell the reader:  the “broadening” will take a lot more money out of the state economy.

Page 10 of the “Budget for a Better Minnesota” shows that the net result of the changes to the sales tax will forcibly extract 2.1 billion more dollars from the “economy” (because apparently cranking up taxes on “the rich” isn’t enough to pay for A Better Minnesota.

Slide Ten from the “Budget for a Better Minnesota”, Click for a full-sized version.

In terms of specific changes to specific taxes?  That’s on Page eight of the “Budget for a Better Minnesota”:

From the “Budget for a Better Minnesota”, page 8. Click for a larger view.

The Democrats’ big chanting points – “fairer” income taxes, the cuts in state property taxes – are farts in the wind.

The two big sources of revenue to pay for all of that”Better Minnesota” are, according to the slide above…

• $4.2 Billion in new sales tax revenue (offset by $2.1 Billion from the rate cut), for a net hike of $2.1 Billion
• $370 million in cigarette taxes which, as we showed on Monday, will most likely not be collected.

So the sales tax “rate cut” is a smokescreen to cover the fact that the state will be exacting much, much more from this state’s economy (and more still, once the cigarette tax inevitably flops).

Governor Messinger Dayton phrases this as something inevitable – and Sturdevant, like any good stenographer, passes it on that way:

But Dayton wouldn’t consider asking households to pay a tax when they hire a lawyer or tax accountant unless he asked businesses to do the same. Fairness demands as much, he argues.

“This is going to be a tough decade,” Dayton told the Star Tribune Editorial Board last week. “If people understand that we’ve got a fair system, they’re going to be a lot more accepting of what we’ll have to do” to meet a rising demand for government services while federal help shrinks.

Notice how “leaving more money in everyone’s hands and cutting spending” never crosses anyone’s minds, even obliquely?  Even though that’s plenty fair?

The DFL’s had a standard dodge for that for the past forty years; “yes, you pay a lot of taxes, but they’re high quality taxes!”

He’s right: Tax fairness is important in a democracy. But competitiveness matters, too, in a place that aspires to be a player in the global economy — doesn’t it?

“Yes, but that needs to be measured in terms of value, not just taxes,” advised economist Art Rolnick, late of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve…the 50-year Minnesota success formula has been to invest in high-return “public goods” like a well-educated workforce, transportation and public safety. “We offer a great public environment,” Rolnick said. “That’s our edge.”

That’s been the DFL’s line – and, at the risk of sounding redundant, Sturdevant’s – for those entire fifty years.

But the world has changed a lot in those fifty years – and so has the upper Midwest.

In 1963, when the DFL was developing the tax policy that Mark Dayton just re-introduced with a huge arthritic groan last week, the Twin Cities were the unquestioned economic, political, educational, educational and social center of the upper Midwest.  And the United States was the world’s only functioning economy; Japan and Germany were still rebuilding; China and India were third-world nations in the middle of disastrous socialist experiments; South Korea was ravaged by war and underperforming the communist North.  Ours was the only economy that had the resources to both innovate and produce and export anything of value.   We could afford to give union workers a wage double the going rate and a lifetime defined-benefit pension!

And Minnesota was an industrial, financial and educational hub of an agrarian region.  The U of M was a big, powerful land grant research university surrounded by teacher colleges and ag schools.

Today North Dakota is kicking our ass economically – and even before Big Oil, Fargo was out-growing the Twin Cities based on medical and high-tech development.  Wisconsin’s growth (especially after adjusting for Milwaukee) is better than ours (more later this week).  And the education system in North Dakota has always rivaled and by some measures beaten Minnesota’s fabled system, at a fraction of the cost, while the University of Minnesota has become both a money vortex and a mediocre participant in the education price bubble.

And last week’s budget has more than a few businesses eyeing the environment across the borders – or around the globe.

So when Lori Sturdevant writes…:

When business folk come to the Capitol, they would do well to acknowledge that their competitive edge depends not only on how Minnesota ranks on taxes, but also on what those taxes buy.

…she, and the DFL for whom she shills, should not be in the least surprised if people start asking that.

They might not get the answers she and the Strib and the DFL have spent the last fifty years programming people to give.

Anh Trinh has been running Anh’s Beauty Salon, way down by University and Dale, for a couple of decades now.

Her business was one of the flood of Asian businesses that reclaimed University from blight and complete free-fall starting in about the eighties…

…and who are being displaced by the misguided “Train From Nowhere To Nowhere”.

Here, Anh testifies at the Met Council

Especially note the appearance by Jack McCann of the University Avenue Business Association.  Here’s his quote:

This project from planning to design to funding to construction can be summed up as dishonest and pathetic. An honest organization (which is not the Met Council) would have openly evaluated the real effects of shoehorning a project this size onto this avenue.

You hear this, people of St. Louis Park and Eden Prairie?  This is what awaits you if when the DFL jams the Southwest Light Rail down your throats.

Let’s take a quick jaunt through history.

Spring 2011: Governor Dayton proposes a budget with a school payment “shift” – a delay of payments to schools until after an arbitrary date, the end of a fiscal year, to “move” the spending from one budget to another – of something well over $2 billion dollars.

May 2011:  The GOP delivers a balanced budget that includes a shift of a little over a billion dollars.  The DFL whinges that the GOP is “using a gimmick” to balance the budget.  Notwithstanding the fact that Governor Dayton had himself proposed a “shift” twice as large as the GOP’s.

June 2012:  The GOP proposes a bill to completely “repay” (i.e., pay before the arbitrary date) the existing “shift”.  Governor Messinger Dayton, incomprehensibly, vetoes it.

DFLers muttered that paying back the shift would have been  irresponsible, although they never really said why.

Election Season, 2012:  The DFL relentlessly beats the GOP over the head with its chanting point about “Short-changing the children!”, notwithstanding the fact that the GOP had made an effort to fix it, only to be thwarted by Governor Messinger Dayton.

At this point, to the DFL, the “shift” is a campaign bludgeon.

Mid January 2013:  The DFL proposes a budget that proposes paying back half of the “Shift”, but in a bill that – notwithstanding that the flood of other new spending and the tsunami of new taxes – has no funding mechanism, so the whole proposal is vapor.

Late January 2013:  A DFL legislator says the shift “is just another tool”.

Summary:  to the DFL, the “shift” has gone from “Irresponsible to pay back”, to “a fiscal assault weapon aimed at our children!” to “just a tool“.

Seriously.

Conclusion:  The DFL defaulted on their promise “to the children”; they defrauded the voters by saying they’d pay “the shift” back, and they lied about the Republicans’ plans to do the same. 

Discuss.

Special discussion point:  why haven’t Rachel Stassen-Berger, Tom Scheck, Tim Pugmire, John Cronan, Pat Kessler and the rest of the elite capitol press corps reported on this?

CORRECTION: First two grafs were 2011, not 2012.  Time flies when you’re fighting rapacious spendthrifts, doesn’t it?

The fact that Lori Sturdevant is a relentless shill for the DFL is one of those things that Minnesota conservatives have come to accept as background noise.

Her column from this past weekend – it’s entitled “Mark Dayton — A Man With A Plan“, and it paints Governor Messinger’s Dayton’s toenails about as much as you’d suspect from the title – almost serves to give you context as to why she’s such a DFL up-sucker.  Sturdevant is apparently too innumerate and ignorant of basic economics to even pass as a moderate Republican.

Give Gov. Mark Dayton this much: He’s found a way to raise taxes that the business community appears to hate more than an income tax hike for the rich.

Dayton’s proposal to impose the state’s sales tax on the services businesses buy — legal, advertising, accounting, computing and the like — had by week’s end become Competitiveness Enemy No. 1. In volume and vitriol, business condemnation of that proposal was outstripping the reaction two years ago to Dayton’s unsuccessful bid for a new income tax bracket for top incomes.

(“Vitriol” has apparently become “any criticism of any Democrat”)

Sturdevant’s propaganda piece column faithfully passes on what have become the DFL’s big rhetorical bludgeons in this campaign:

• Blame “the rich” who aren’t named Dayton, Messinger, Opperman, Mondale, Cramer…
• Lie about the economy – those of Minnesota and other states
• Give people a misleadingly incomplete picture of their own proposal
• Promise wondrous things someday in exchange for metric poo-tons of your money now.

It’s Those Darned Indecisive Rich Businesspeople!: Sturdevant starts by trying to portray Minnesota’s small businesspeople as flighty petty tyrants who just can’t decide what it is they want.

What keeping up with the competition requires of a state, it seems, is a changeable, eye-of-the-corporate-beholder sort of thing.

Sturdevant would have you believe that the business community can’t make up its mind; while two years ago Governor Messinger Dayton’s entire message was a class-war-baiting tax assault on “the rich”, Dayton has broadened the attack to every business, everywhere.

Sturdevant writes:

Dayton’s new plan still raises the income tax by about $1 billion on the top-earning 2 percent of filers. But the marginal rate he proposes now, 9.85 percent, is down from 10.95 percent two years ago. Instead of tied for highest in the country, it would be fourth-highest, up from eighth-highest today.

Sturdevant misleadingly presents this as an either-or.  It’s not.  Both taxes were burdens on business, especially small businesses.

On the one hand, Dayton’s “fourth tier” tax would have had a huge impact on a massive swath of small businesspeople, especially successful small entrepreneurs running “Subchapter S” corporations who may have had incomes over $250,000 – dentists, consultants, salespeople, and a fair number of high-tech recruiters of my acquaintance (while not affecting liberal plutocrats like the Dayton family, most of whose income isn’t earned).

On the other?  This round of increases hits nearly every business at every level; it combines a piddly decrease in business tax rates…:

Dayton seemed to be responding to some of the business lobby’s old anticompetitiveness complaints. He offered to reduce the state’s corporate tax rate from 9.8 percent to 8.4 percent, taking it from fourth in the nation to 12th.

…with a 5.5% increase in many of the costs of doing business and, for many service-related businesses, a 5.5% decrease in business (which is what adding a 5.5% tax hike does to any good or service, all other things being equal).

“Be happy to pay for a Better Minnesota”, Sturdevant says, “and shut up about it”.

“The Dakotas Do It Too!”:  Liberal water-carriers have been painstakingly scouring Google for examples of taxes that the Dakotas have that Minnesota doesn’t yet, but that Governor Messinger Dayton is proposing.

And they’ve gotten the chanting points to Sturdevant, who throws on a little unearned contempt:

“It’s the most damaging thing we could do for competitiveness,” Minnesota Business Partnership exec Charlie Weaver said of taxing sales of business-to-business services. Minnesota would join just five other states — including South Dakota — in tacking the sales tax on so wide a range of business inputs…For 46 years, apparently, there’s been a Minnesota tax policy that this state’s businesses liked better than South Dakota’s version. Before Dayton flushed that out, who knew?

Sturdevant should leave the snark to Sally Jo Sorenson.  Not that it’d improve her point, but Sturdevant trying to go Jon Stewart is a little like Judi Dench donning a “Hollister” hoodie and a sideways baseball cap.

Oh, she’s wrong.  It’s one of many disconnected factoids that the left has been passing off this past week; “SoDak has business service taxes!”  “North Dakota taxes clothing!”.  Yes, both are true; but those taxes are parts of overall tax burdens that are much lower than in Minnesota.

According to the Tax Foundation, as of 2010, Minnesota had the seventh-highest overall state and local tax burden in the US.  South Dakota was #49.  My native North Dakota was #35 – more on that later – and is, as of the 2013 session, working on slashing state  taxes.

Sturdevant niggles and nit-picks and snarks with all the grace of a German jazz band about individual taxes to dodge the real point; both the Dakotas have lower overall taxes than Minnesota.  And better economies.

Focus On The Luxuries, And The Necessities Will Take Care Of Themselves!:  One of the left’s most damning and damnable conceits is that all economic economic activity, the “fruits of all our labors” – both of them fancy-schmantzy ways of saying “the money all of us work for” – are first and foremost government property, for government to use, and use as much, as it sees fit and then leave what’s left to the rest of us.

No, really:

The governor has come around to the realization that compared with other states, Minnesota underutilizes its sales tax.

Or, put another way, the Governor Messinger Dayton sees that there is productivity in the state that could be further sapped.

 He endorsed extending it to services when he saw that doing so would permit a drop in the overall sales tax rate from 6.875percent to 5.5 percent. That would move the rate from seventh-highest to 27th among the states, to the benefit of businesses and consumers who buy already-taxed goods.

Yay, a tax cut.  It amounts to about a 20% cut to the sales tax rate.  That’s a good thing, right?

Sure – but only if if you’re not getting…

An Incomplete Picture: Just as Governor Messinger Dayton sold the state bills of goods with electronic pull tabs, the “repayment of the school funding shift” and the cigarette tax, he’s doing it again.

So what does that mean?

It means Sturdevant is abetting Governor Messinger Dayton in yet another lie.

The same day the Obama Administration moved to open up combat roles to women, Representative Carolyn McCarthy – yet another worthless New York congressorc – appeared with Piers Morgan:

PIERS MORGAN: I have an interview coming up with two young women who wrote a piece in which they said they wanted the rights of the AR-15 weapon at home because they feared they would be attacked and they wanted a gun that would guarantee they would murder or would kill their attacker. How do you respond to that particular argument, which is they believe under their second amendment right they should be allowed an AR-15?

 

Hon? You should try a lighter rifle. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (Orc – NY) says you’re too weak and ineffective.  Oh, yeah – that’s an “M16”, which is like an AR15, but fires full-automatic, like a machine gun, which is shorthand for “more testosterone than Chuckles Schumer has ever had”.

CAROLYN MCCARTHY: I will tell you, if you talk to professionals, hunters and certainly sportsmen, they’ll tell you that’s not the gun to use. A rifle is more accurate. It’s certainly easier for a woman to be able to do that.

Heyyyyy! That’s a woman! And she’s hunting! With an AR15! And she shot a buck – call Naomi Wolf, we’ve got symbolism on aisle 15!

Oops, sounds like someone mixed up her chanting points.  The 2nd Amendment isn’t about hunting.  And while an AR15 isn’t everyone’s first choice for a home defense gun – too much overpenetration for my taste, but I live in the city – it’s not a bad one, either, objectively.

Not only are those women – Israelis, in this case – but those are all M16s, too.  Six women with fully-automatic weapons.  Doesn’t Rep. McCarthy seem a bit like an Iranian Mullah in comparison?

And one wonders if Rep. McCarthy knows that not only is the AR15 a rifle, and one of the most popular hunting rifles in most states, but also one of the lightest, lowest-recoil and easiest-handling rifles anywhere in the gun business?

It’s Lyudmila Pavlichenko. And she’s carrying a “real” rifle, a Nagant M93. Which has about double the hitting power of an AR15, and is great for going after elk, but not normally ideal for inside-the-home defense. However, I wouldn’t invade Ms. Pavlichenko’s home; she had 309 confirmed kills in under a year during World War 2. The USSR, like the Israelis, used female snipers alongside the guys. Pavchenko was the top scorer.  I bet she could pick your nose with an AR15, too. Oh, yeah – and she had a masters in literature!

At any rate, Rep. McCarthy, leave the thinking to the smart women.

Women of the 101st Airborne with, you guessed it, M16s.

Many of whom are shooters.

.Yesterday in this space, we watched Betty McCollum at a town hall in Oakdale  repeatedly declaim that she wanted to see a “dialog” between Real Americans and the gun-grabbers.

I had all sorts of suggestions – but I wondered; what does “dialog” mean to Representative McCollum?

I got a copy of the letter she’s been sending her supporters:

Sadly over the past several years, far too many innocent American children, women and men have been the victims of gun violence. The sobering statistics about gun violence speak volumes. According to the U.S. Census, of the 129,741 murders that were reported between 2000 and 2008, nearly two-thirds of the victims were killed by a firearm. Every year nearly 100,000 people in America are shot or killed with a gun according to the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence. Every day, 270 people in America – 47 of them children and teens – are injured or slain due to gun violence.

If this is what she’s bringing to the “dialog”, I’m afraid she’s not trying all that hard to “communicate”:

• Why show eight years of murder stats in one place?  To avoid showing that the gun murder rate is sharply down .
• Where did most of those shootings come from?  A criminal was involved – as the shooter, the target or both – in the vast majority of them.
• The Brady Factory uses stats that cuts off “Children and Teens” at age 19.  Plenty of 18-19 year olds are not only not “children”, they are criminals and gang-bangers, and doing plenty of shooting and getting shot at.

I may not be an elected representative, but where I come from “dialog” is best when it isn’t “one side spewing BS and the other side constantly correcting them”.

Oh, yeah – here’s more “dialog”:

Nonetheless voices like the NRA will do everything to protect guns rather than the lives of our children and law enforcement officers. I have consistently opposed the NRA and their extremist agenda and will continue to do so. As a result of this work I have received an ‘F’ rating from the NRA.

Keep up the “dialog”, Rep. McCollum.  Your seat is safe – for now – so you can do it

But let’s extend the “dialog” to some outstate DFLers.

Tim Walz and Collin Peterson:  do you agree with Rep. McCollum?

How about you, Patti Fritz and David Bly and Zac Dorholt and David Bly and all you other outstate DFLers?  How’s Rep. McCollum’s idea of “dialog” sound to you?  Kinda…extreme?  Is this what you plan on taking to your constituents next year?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A Democrat senator sleeping with underage Dominican prostitutes?  That’s no crime.  Screwing over the next generation is Democrat policy, he’s just taking a personal interest.

Joe Doakes

Heh.

Well, I’m sure when the media gets a hold of this story…

…I mean, other than the stuff they’ve known and been sitting on for nearly a year, naturally…

Not sure if the President is going to have this sheriff standing behind him glowering at the audience the next time he announces a gun control bill…

…but we need a lot more like him.

To: Rep. Betty McCollum
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Mission Accomplished!

Rep. McCollum:

You had a “Town Hall” meeting deep in the heart of DFL-addled Oakdale yesterday.   MNCD4 Conservative was there to shoot video.

And even there, even you couldn’t dodge talking about the Second Amendment .

Video below the jump, so that the rest of the page can actually load:

(more…)

Obama evades in a way not may people this side of Archie Bunker try to do it:

“Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he said. “And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations.

“And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake”.

Well, isn’t that special.

Although the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting – not at all – I’ll point out that it’s just as illegal to own a skeet-shooting shotgun in Chicago as it is a Glock.

Provided you’re a law-abiding citizen.

The problem is, criminals have “profound respect for the traditions of hunting”.  They just hunt the rest of us.

Betty McCollum is now on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee.

A few months back, those of us who figured Zygi Wilf should pay for his own real estate improvements rather than plunder the state treasury were vindicated when turned out that the “mechanism” (read: gimmick) the state planned to use for its share – “electronic pull tabs” – wasn’t going to deliver anywhere near the planned revenue.  If things didn’t turn around fast (note: they will not), the state’s “contribution” to Zygi Wilf’s investment the Vikings stadium will have to be paid for by all of us taxpaying ripe sucks out of the general fund.

That’s bad enough – and it’s just to cover a putatively fixed bill.

Now, Governor Messinger Dayton has started coming out with budget proposals.  And along with some of those proposals (although, notably, not the one to repay part of the education budget “shift”) come some “mechanisms” to pay for them.  Gimmicks, if you will.

Minnesotans, being virtuous in a passive-aggressive sort of way, love “sin taxes”; tobacco is a common public policy kick toy in this state.  And Messinger Dayton intends to jack up the price of cigarettes by 94 cents a pack.

It’s not going to work, of course.

For starters:  cigarette taxes never, ever deliver the kind of revenue that their proponents expect.

Despite fanciful claims to the contrary, many tobacco tax hikes across the country have failed to produce the promised revenue. In 2009, Washington, D.C. raised its cigarette tax from $2.00 to $2.50 per pack. The District projected the new tax would generate $45 million in revenue, about 20 percent above 2009 levels. Instead, revenues came in $12 million below projections and $4.2 million lower than before the tax was imposed. Similarly, New Jersey reported a $52 million shortfall in tobacco tax revenues after it raised its cigarette tax by 17.5 cents in 2007.

The reason for this?  Addiction notwithstanding, cigarette smokers are people – and people alter their behavior to avoid paying taxes on discretionary things like smoking.  If a tax increase jacks up the price of a pack of smokes by 10%, then all other things being equal, people cut their spending.

“Yay!” say the tax’s proponents.  “10% of people quit smoking!  Or they smoke 10% less!”.  Some do.  Others switch to cheaper cigarettes, or buy from the black market that always, inevitably burgeons whenever government cracks down on something people want; at any rate, people avoid paying the tax as best they can.  It’s Econ 101.

(Indeed, the public health benefits of taxing smoking seem to have stalled over the past twenty years)

But government can’t seem to avoid the spending that was to be based on all that tobacco money, and goodness knows no DFL administration would ever roll back an expenditure that we can’t afford.  Which means:

Due to these declining revenues, states often turn to broad-based tax increases to pay for an overspending problem. A recent NTU study also showed that 41 of 59 state tobacco tax increases from 2001-2006 were followed by more expansive tax increases within two years, as states attempted to make up for tobacco revenue that never appeared.

Just like the Vikings stadium; they’ll be after us to fill in the shortfall.

Oh, yeah – and for all of Governor Messinger’s Dayton’s palaver about making the rich pay their “fair share”, it’s worth noting that the cigarette tax is the most regressive tax of all – according to that noted conservative tool, Governor Mark Messinger Dayton.

Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d assume the Governor‘s ex wife was just saying things to get elected…

Gary Gross has also been covering this.

Comparing two events:

And at least one of the people at the “Gun Control Rally” is a pro-gun ringer.

But compare the media presence, hey?

(Via Andrew Rothman at GOCRA)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

White male madmen routinely take guns into “Gun Free Zones.” It’s as if they see the signs then intentionally disregard them.

White men never go into the Ladies Room. Not even madmen do that. The sign stops them cold.

Women will use the Men’s Room in a pinch, such as a rock concert, but the reverse never happens. It’s taboo.

If you could make the Gun Free Zone as strong a cultural taboo as the Ladies Room, things would be grand. If not . . . .

Joe Doakes
Como Park

It may be society’s last genuine taboo…

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m in from 1-3.  I’ll be talking with Representative Erik Paulsen about the “fiscal cliff” tax hikes, the outlook for the Feinstein bans in the House, and much more.  Also Steve Hensley on the GOP “Where Do We Go From Here?” event on Wednesday.
• Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Check out our new UStream video and chat .
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

One of my favorite lines about resurrecting history is from a movie – Braveheart, I want to say – and goes something like “History is written by those who kill the heroes”.

Much of what we Americans today “know” as received conventional wisdom about World War 2 is the self-serving version that the victor gets to write.  The idea that the Poles were anachronistic bumblers who charged at tanks with cavalry lances was a German propaganda fiction, ladled on top of centuries of ethnic and tribal prejudice. The notion that the French were cowardly “cheese eating surrender monkeys” is more of the same, filtered through American Cold War-era impatience with the frustrating inscrutability of their post-Gaullist foreign policy – and the enduring references to “Maginot Mentality” is a begged historical question, using the conclusion that “France Fell” as evidence that the Maginot Line was in and of itself a dumb idea.

It’s tempting to say the Italians got the same short shrift; it’s almost equally tempting to say their reputation as bumbling Barney Fifes who couldn’t shoot straight and whose tanks had one speed forward and four in reverse would seem to have been amply supported by their record during World War II.  From their misguided adventures in Abyssinia (Ethiopia and Eritrea today) to their snake-bitten attempt to subdue Greece (drawing the Germans into war on a second front) to their inability to break into France even as the Germans were mauling the bulk of the French army, to the collapse of their North African army (drawing the Germans into war on a fourth front), the Italian war effort seemed often to provide comic relief to those who wrote the history books.

Of course, as Ringer and I have written this series, we’ve found bits and pieces of some inconvenient truths about the Italians; as inept as Mussolini had left the military’s higher leadership, and as poorly as the anemic socialized economy allowed Italy to equip her troops (especially the Army), there were some examples of redoubtable courage, esprit de corps and can-do-ism; the Italian Marines’ special forces attacks that crippled a significant chunk of the British fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the daring guerrilla war that the Italian remnants fought amidst the ruins of Mussolini’s East African “Empire”…

…and, seventy years ago today, in the midst of the disaster that would doom the German/Italian advance in Russia, one of the most titanic displays of sheer force of will in military history, around and about a forgotten little village in the middle of the endless steppe.

———-

Mussolini, seeking to increase his stock value after having been bailed out by the Germans in Greece and North Africa, committed a force of about 60,000 men in three divisions to support the initial invasion of the USSR in 1941; he shortly quadrupled down, increasing the force to almost 240,000 men in ten regular divisions, plus a German division and brigades of Croatians and Camicia Neri (“Blackshirts”) as a reserve and to fight Russian guerillas.

Priest ministering to Italian troops in Russia

The 8th Army deployed to the German’s southern offensive, holding the flanks of the German’s high-water strike deep into southern Russia.  By the winter of 1942, the Italians, along with Romanian and Hungarian troops, were holding the flanks of the German spearhead as it tried to fight its way out of being stopped cold at Stalingrad.

Mussolini inspects Italian troops from the initial “mobile” contingent. If the trucks don’t look very uniform – they’re not. They were impressed from commercial uses.

The Italians were never intentionally the focal point of the action – or at least the Germans didn’t intend for them to be.  The main goal of the Italians, and the Hungarians on their own flanks, was to make sure nothing snuck behind the Germans to cut them off at Stalingrad.

Although the original Italian deployment was intended to be a “Mobile” force, the 8th Army itself was not only mostly foot-borne and horse-drawn, but it had virtually no tank support. The Italians had to settle for a few captured Russian vehicles, like this T-34.

But on December 16, 1942, two Soviet Armies – the 1st and 3rd Guards Armies, a total of some 100,000 battle-hardened Soviet troops – crossed the Don River and attacked the 8th Army, in temperatures that dipped to -40F at night.  A follow-up attack in early January overwhelmed most of the 8th Army, destroying three divisions outright.  The Hungarians on the other flank also gave way, and the Soviet Guards encircled what was left of the 8th Army – which amounted to the “8th Alpini Corps”, composed of three Alpini (mountain) divisions (the Tridentina, Julia and Cuneense Alpine Divisions), among the elite of the Italian Army – before pressing on toward the town of Rostov, through which the German lines of communications to Stalingrad ran.  The Soviets, with an overwhelming force of tanks, proceeded to capture Rostov, putting 120 miles of Soviet-held territory between safe German lines and Stalingrad…

Troops of Tridentina in the Russian winter.

This just in from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance:

Senator Diane Feinstein has released her “Assault Weapon” ban proposal, and it is as bad as we expected, including a magazine limit of nine rounds, banning of rifles with even one incorrect cosmetic feature, and hundreds of specific guns banned by name.

 TODAY is the day to call Senator Klobuchar and Senator Franken and tell them that you will not tolerate any further infringement of your rights.

Senator Al Franken (D)
Web contact form
Phone: (651) 221-1016
full contact information

 

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D)
Web contact form
Phone: 1-888-224-9043
full contact information

Get out and call them. And then your Representative.

The Congress fears and respects the power, numbers and tenacity of the Second Amendment movement.  We need to show them they need to fear us more – and turn that fear into action.  Or inaction.

I’m getting on the phone now.

Minnesota newspapers, largely, supported Governor Messinger Dayton and the DFL.  They largely not only bought the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota’s” bill of goods hook line and sinker, but most of them worked tirelessly to propagate it, and to squelch dissent from it.

They studiously avoided, almost completely, any reporting that would have impeded the DFL’s rise to power.

The Minnesota media, at large, were among the DFL’s most valuable players this past two electoral cycles.  At the highest levels – the Strib, the PiPress, and at least the programming arm of MPR – they serve as the DFL’s Praetorian Guard.

But now?  Now that the governor is tacking 5.5% sales taxes (for starters) onto print services, advertising and retail newspaper sales?

Not so much:

Business groups and retailers complain that the proposal would cost jobs. As he spoke to the Minnesota Newspaper Association, several editors and newspaper owners complained that a sales tax on newspapers would hurt their industry.

Tom West, the managing editor of the Morrison County Record in Little Falls, spoke about his concerns during a question and answer session.

“We are the ones who cover local government and state government, and we are wondering why you would think it would be a good idea to have less information about government and what government is up to,” West said.

(Cynical answer: “Because you’ve served your purpose”.  See also The Minnesota Independent).

(Slightly less cynical answer: “While your contributions to DFL hegemony were vital, you don’t have the same political clout as AFSCME, the SEIU or MPR).

(Cynical and partisan but realistic answer: “How about not just “covering local government”, but turnin a critical eye on the DFL?  For once?”)

Others said that expanding the sales tax to newspaper ink, paper and advertising would result in job losses. Dayton said he understood the concern but did not back away from his plan.

Job losses only matter if they’re union.

Small papers aren’t union.

Big papers are – and we’ll see what happens there.

As to the rest of you newspapers?  You got the government you mostly worked for, largely shilled for, and for the most part operated as in-the-bag PR agents for.  Most of your editorial stances praised Dayton and the DFL’s return to power.

So now you’re saying you’re not Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota?

Suck it.

BONUS QUESTION FOR DFLers: What do you think happens when you tack 5.5% onto the price of something?

All other things being equal, people buy 5.5% less of it.

Ponder losing 5.5% of your business overnight.  Ponder hard.

Just a quick shameless plug:  tomorrow on the Northern Alliance I’ll have…:

• Representative Erik Paulsen, talking about the Fiscal Cliff and its attendant tax hikes, the Debt Ceiling and what it means to you, and…well, whatever you want to call in about!
• Steve Hensley about his “Where Do We Go From Here?” event next Wednesday (which I’ll be moderating along with Henco Commissioner Jeff Johnson).

Tune in!