Hugo Chavez: Pining for the Fjords

Hugo Chavez is dead.  Will his political philosophy be far behind?

He was the ubiquitous face of Venezuela, both domestically and abroad, for over 12 years.  Bombastic, dictatorial and often paranoid in style, Hugo Chavez signified, in his own words, “Socialism for the 21st Century,”.  In reality, his political orientation (known as Chávismo in his home country) was little more than a mixture of traditional Bolivarianism with sprinkles of nepotism and populism for good measure.  Or perhaps to more bluntly put Chavez in his proper context, he was just another Latin American dictator who was more interested in projecting his power than his philosophy.  He was also among the relatively few left-leaning leaders that human rights groups publicly challenged.

In short, Hugo Chavez will not be missed on the international stage.

The news of Hugo Chavez’s death has prompted the usual obituary postings recapping the Venezuelan leader’s life.  His attempted coup in 1992, his rise to power in 1998, the coup against him in 2002, and his attempt to become a counterweight to the U.S. in Latin America, aligning himself with China and Iran while promoting socialist agitators in other countries.

What been less discussed is what Chavez’s passing means for his country and Chávismo.

In the immediate term, the answer is, well, nothing.  Chavez had already appointed his successor, the radical Nicolás Maduro, as vice-president, ensuring the continuation of Chávismo and its political patronage.

Maduro has also continued the other tradition of Chavez’s reign – bizarre pronouncements.  Hours before Chavez’s death, Maduro proclaimed that Chavez had been somehow given cancer by “established enemies” (the U.S.), followed by expelling two U.S. attaches:

The U.S. government may be mum so far, but Latin American experts were quick to dismiss Maduro’s speech as wild and nonsensical.

“This clown show demonstrates that these guys are amateurs and play their hands too easily,” said Chris Sabatini, an analyst for America’s Society/Council of the Americas, a think tank in New York City.

It’s poorly executed plan for a post-Chávez Venezuela, Sabatini said.

“This is a desperate government peddling in absurdities,” he said.“They needed some sort of cover and now they don’t know what to do.”

Despite his likely backing of those who supported Chavez, Maduro is not the only viable option.  Opposition candidate and former mayor Henrique Capriles Radonski is likely to run again, having lost to Chavez in October by only 11%.  Capriles is most certainly the anti-Chavez, having been jailed for joining the coup attempt in 2002, while opposing most of Chavez’s high profile policies, including backing away from alliances with Iran and the Colombian rebel group FARC.  Worst for Chavez’s legacy?  Capriles would embrace the economic policies of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Despite the reputation of Latin America falling further into the Socialist clutches of Chavez and his followers, the real trendsetter has been Lula.  Initially feared to be a Chavez clone when he came to power in 2002, Lula’s more moderate economic policies have turned Brazil from being the largest debtor among emerging economies to a net creditor, while moving more Brazilians out of poverty and into the middle class.

Lula wouldn’t be recognized as moderate or conservative north of the Rio Grande, although his successor’s plan to privatize airports, ports, and roads is more conservative than policies here.  Nevertheless, “Lulismo” represents a definite turning of the political tides in Latin America.

Is it a pipe-dream to believe that Chavez’s policies could follow him into the dustbin of history?  Perhaps not.  In the days before Chavez won re-election against Capriles, the polls showed another outcome was possible – Capriles would beat Maduro by six points if they faced off.

So how much money did Big Labor spend along with Big Lefty Plutocrat to buy the Governor’s Office and the Legislature?

If you believe the Strib, it’s “around $3 million.

If you believe the Strib is going to tell the truth about DFL perfidy – and especially the big money behind the DFL, I’ve got a 50% stake in the next Lindsay Lohan movie to sell you.

Bill Walsh, long-time Minnesota political operative, did a little digging into the story – and he’s got something the Twin Cities’ mainstream media doesn’t want to give you; the facts:

I’m publishing his piece as a guest writer at Shot In The Dark today.

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Unions Spent $11.1 Million in 2012 to Buy Friendly Legislature for Gov. Mark Dayton

Bill Walsh, Shot In The Dark Guest Writer

A few weeks ago the Star Tribune published an article about campaign spending in the 2012 election focusing on two big individual donors – Alida Messinger and Bob Cummins. The conclusion? Each party has a big donor that gave lots of money, it’s all a wash. I’m afraid this story is all we’re going to get from the Strib on campaign spending analysis. Today, in an otherwise well written article on union influence at the capitol this year, Rachel Stassen-Berger writes that unions “put at least $3 million into elections.” I guess $11.1 million is “at least” $3 million. She’s only off by $8.1 million.

I took the time to go through the campaign finance reports of 111 different union organizations in Minnesota and nationally for the 2012 election. Spending ranged from Education Minnesota at $1.8 million to the Bemidji Central Labor Body AFL-CIO Political Fund at $250. State and local unions accounted for $9.1 million in campaign spending with national unions kicking in the other $2 million.

Union Contributions 2012 by

It took some time to come to the right numbers because many unions give money to each other for joint spending initiatives. These numbers reflect the net spending after backing out contributions between unions. It goes without saying that over 99% of the money went to DFL candidates and causes.

I blame myself for not getting this research to the StarTribune before they published today’s article. It really would have added some punch to their story.

For example, when talking about the nurses union asking the legislature for new staffing ratios that will drive up health care costs, it would have been useful to point out to readers the nurses union spent over $500,000 helping DFL candidates win back the legislature last year. As a matter of fact, that probably should be mentioned every time the media covers the progress of this legislation.

Likewise, when discussing AFSCME’s attempt to force unionization on small private childcare businesses, it would inform the reader to mention that seven different AFSCME organizations gave a total of $1.6 million to DFL candidates and causes in 2012.

The list goes on – Education Minnesota is trying to resurrect their statewide insurance pool legislation, MAPE and AFSCME are getting new generous employment contracts, the minimum wage is being increased and Dayton is following through on his promise to raise taxes on the rich.

But business spends a lot too, right? Wrong. It’s hard to get anywhere near $11.1 million if you add up the business money spent in the 2012 election. A business friendly PAC called Minnesota’s Future spent $1.2 million while the Chamber of Commerce-supported Coalition for Minnesota Businesses spent just $283,000 on the 2012 election. We all know the MNGOP received little support from the business community and the two legislative caucuses combined to spend only $4.1 million, and not all of that can be attributed to business.

According to today’s Pioneer Press, however, business interests do spend a lot on lobbying. The Campaign Finance Board reported that business interests spent $17.4 million lobbying the legislature during the 2011 session.

This may be the key to understanding today’s political environment. Unions spend heavily getting sympathetic Democrats elected to office. Once they are in place, it doesn’t take much money to lobby –the jury is already selected.

Business on the other hand, spends relatively little on the nuts and bolts of campaigns and prefers to hire lobbyists to try to influence the debate after the legislature has been selected.

What’s next?

First, Republican legislators need to hammer away on the $11.1 million unions spent to buy this legislature for Gov. Mark Dayton. They need to remind the public and the press at every opportunity to follow the money. Pay to play has never been more obvious in Minnesota.

Second, the business community needs to shift some of its resources to where it matters: the 2014 general election. Business will never match the collective self interest and desperation of the unions, so we need to reach a higher level of cooperation if we hope to recapture the House and win back the governor’s office in 2014.

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MITCH ADDS:  More on this in coming weeks.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It snowed 8 inches last night. The city streets have not been plowed and won’t be, until sometime tomorrow. But those of us who drove on the snow-covered streets, packing down the snow so the plows can’t scrape it off tonight and spinning the packed snow into ice at every intersection, are morally superior to those who looked out the window and said “To Hell with it, I’ve got leave coming, I’m taking the day off.”

At least, I hope we are. I’d hate like the dickens to be sitting in my cubicle not only dumber than those who stayed home, but morally equal, too.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Gotta say, while I rarely work from home, it is the absolute greatest thing in the world today.

I occasionally brag that I can make the gun-grabber case better than most of the gun-grabbers.  Then, I can turn around and destroy the case.

Because the closest the gun grabbers ever come to a factual case – as opposed to an emotional one – is when they run down one assortment of numbers or another.

The problem is, they give you the half of the numbers that look bad if they’re completely wrenched out of context.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker notes that the Strib is doing exactly that:

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported yesterday that the State of Minnesota issued 31,657 permits to carry handguns in 2012, a record number. No surprise there. The Strib puts that number in the context of the current debate over gun control, and concludes with these statistics, presented without comment:

Minnesota’s permit holders have committed at least 1,159 crimes since 2003, including 114 in which a gun was used, according to the BCA.

Wow, sounds like a regular crime wave among gun permit holders! But what do those data actually show? According to the same article, there are now over 125,000 permit holders in Minnesota, or around 2.6% of the over-21 population. So, other things being equal, you would expect them to commit something like 2 to 2 1/2% of all crimes (since a considerable number are committed by persons who are less than 21 years old). In order to put the Strib’s numbers in context, you need to know something about the number of crimes committed in Minnesota.

By the way, I’ve done the same thing with the Violence Policy Center’s numbers on a national level a few years back; putting their numbers (which purported to show a nationwide crime wave among carry permit holders) in full context, showing violent crimes and murders as a percentage of the same crimes in the general population, I showed that carry permittees nationwide were over two orders of magnitude less likely to kill an innocent person than the general public – and that the general public was three orders of magnitude less likely to be wrongfully murdered by a carry permittee than by a regular schmuck.  And as I showed last summer, a complete and honest look at Minnesota’s numbers show that Minnesotans are safer still at all levels.

John – an actual lawyer – points out the context that the Strib is buggering:

According to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s numbers, there were at least 146,249 crimes of violence and crimes against property in Minnesota in 2011. (I believe that total is low, if we are trying to get a number for all crimes, since drunk driving, for instance, is not included). Let’s assume, to make the calculation simple, that the number of violent and property crimes has remained constant since 2003; actually, it has fallen somewhat. But using the 2011 rate for the period 2004-2012 yields a total of 1,316,241 crimes. (And you thought Minnesota was a law-abiding state!) Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that over that period of time there have been an average of 50,000 carry permit holders in Minnesota; that would be roughly 1.2% of the over-age 18 population [and 60-65,000 would be more correct]. (Again, that is an average from 2004 through 2012, assuming an average of 50,000 permit holders over that time period.)

So do the math: if permit holders were as law-abiding as the average Minnesota citizen, you would expect them to have committed 1.2% of the 1,316,241 crimes from 2004 through 2012, or a total of a little over 16,300. Which tells us, according to the Strib’s numbers, that non-permit holders are around 15 times as likely to commit a crime as permit holders. Carry permit holders must be the most law-abiding segment of Minnesota’s population, with the possible exception of Sunday School teachers.

And sunday school teachers with carry permits, near as I can tell, have committed no crimes whatsoever.

I believe that since Minnesota enacted its shall-issue law in 2003, two permit holders have been charged with homicides. Over the eight years from 2004 through 2011, there were 807 homicides. Using the same logic employed above, one would expect 1.2%, of these homicides to have been perpetrated by carry permit holders. That would be nine or ten murders, as opposed to two.

Actually, there’s only been one murder we know of in the past ten years carried out with a post-2003 shall-issue permit – a woman who shot her boyfriend in Saint Paul.  The shooting took place at the woman’s home, so the permit was irrelevant – but no matter.   There’ve been two justifiable homicides.

But let’s say there are two.  Two murders in ten years breaks down to .04 murders per 100,000 people per year as a percentage of the population; even among the population of carry permit holders, a murder rate of .4/100,000 per year.  The state average is closer to 1.4 per 100,000 per year; in Saint Paul it’s closer to 3/100,000, and Minneapolis has a murder rate of 8.3/100,000.  That means a carry permittee.

And as I noted, there’s actually been only one murder committed by a post-2003 permit holder in Minnesota in the past decade.

As Hinderaker notes, the crime rate among permit holders in Minnesota is vanishingly low, provided you look at all the numbers.

Especially the ones that don’t fit the left’s and media’s narrative.

In the public school district where I grew up, and where my Dad taught most of his career, I don’t remember a lot of “administrators”; I think the Superintendent had a secretary; each school had a principal, the high school and junior highs had assistants, each school had a secretary; there were a couple of guidance counselors, and a couple of special ed people.   If there were thirty paid staff in the whole districåt that weren’t teachers, I’d be amazed.

Thing have changed; Tom Steward notes the changes in the form of a pop quiz:

A quick true or false pop quiz based on a surprising new education study provides some clues to why K-12 public school funding constitutes the biggest line item in Minnesota’s state budget again this year.

1: Minnesota public schools employ more administrators and other non-teaching staff than classroom teachers.

True. Minnesota public schools employ 3,000 more non-classroom staff than teachers.

2: The growth in non-teaching staff has outpaced the increase in students by more than 50 percent.

True. While the student population increased by eight percent, the growth rate of non-teaching personnel exploded by 68 percent between 1992-2009.

3: Minnesota schools could pay their teachers more with the cost savings from “extra” non-teaching staff.

True. Classroom teachers could earn $15,000 more every year with the savings.

Those answers put Minnesota in a class of 21 states flagged as “top-heavy” in the number of non-teaching staff employed in public schools in a new report, “The School Staffing Surge: Decades of Employment Growth in America’s Public Schools, Part II.”

This has been creeping up on everyone.  Remember the district I grew up in?  Not long after I graduated, the number of admins started growing.  They soon had their own building (a disused storefront).  Then another bigger building – which, my dad noted after decades of teaching summer school in a room that felt like a toaster oven, had air conditioning.

Education administration has been a booming business.  That sounds so cynical when I put it that way.  That’s intentional:

“We have increased employment in public schools at a much greater rate than the increase in students, and the most disconcerting part of that trend is that we’ve hired more administrators and other staff than teachers,” said Ben Scafidi, author of the report for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

I’ll add emphasis:

Minnesota public schools have put 20,000 more “non-teaching personnel” on the payroll than the number needed to keep pace with the growth in students between 1992-2009, according to the analysis of data reported by state schools to the US Department of Education. Overall, non-teaching staff outnumbers teachers in the state’s public schools by about 3,000 employees.

And if the response to this is “we need the administrators to deal with the bureaucracy involved in education…” – well, the followup question asks itself, doesn’t it?

A look back at Sequestration after 13 hours.

I can only assume things have gotten worse.

To help turn back the initiative to unionize home daycares (thus further constricting the supply of childcare in this state), contact the members of the House Early Childhood committee.

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 back!  I’ll have Representative Mary Franson on to update us on the DFL push to unionize daycares and personal care attendants.  Plus, a detailed look at the misery sequestration is causing. 
• Brad Carlson is back on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow.  Tune on in!

(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  – hopefully.  
• 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!

Tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, we’ll be getting an update from Rep. Mary Franson about the DFL push to unionize childcare workers and personal care assistants.

Also – we’ll try to total up the damage caused by the sequester so far. Oh, yes, we will.

Tune in tomorrow from 1-3PM on AM1280 The Patriot, or via audio stream, video stream, Facebook and Twitter!

More later tonight.

SCENE: at the Twin Cities Liberal Blogger Collective, located in a secret chamber below the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.

Liberal bloggers Cat SCAT, Derek ROSTON, Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN, GUTTERBALL Gary, and Senior Blogger Randy POSTAL are plotting out their next days coverage, along with cartoonist Kevin LIVERWURST.

POSTAL:  All right.  Let’s start working on today’s coverage.  What’s first?

TORSTENGAARDSEN:   Republicans are complaining about the Dayton tax plan.  My headline is “Republicans complain about Dayton tax plan”.

ROSTON: I’d go with “Republicans:  Tax Plan Is So Unfair!”

POSTAL:  Hm.  Doesn’t exactly zing.  New headline…I got it!  “Republicans Pee Pants Over Tax Fairness!”

(Rest of bloggers chortles with glee as TORSTENGAARDSEN types).

SCAT: How about Glen Gruenhagen’s remarks about gays?

(The rest of the bloggers “hiss”).

Saint Paul business owners, trapped between Saint Paul’s crushing property tax burden and Dayton and the DFL’s tax hikes, are finally speaking out:

Paul Wagner’s family has manufactured and sold conductive wire to the medical and defense industries for nearly 50 years, but he and his wife haven’t ruled out moving the entire company from St. Paul to Wisconsin, where they already maintain two-thirds of their operations.

Smart Minnesota businesses, in other words, got a head start on the exodus.

I know that MN Wire is far from the only one.

Proposed taxes on business transactions and a possible increase to Minnesota’s minimum wage could doubly impact their decision to stay or go.

“In the past three years, there’s been 12 new costs (added) to hiring employees,” said Wagner, president and CEO of Minnesota Wire on Energy Park Drive.

It’s not just (sarcasm on) big plutocrats (sarsasm off) like Wagner.  It’s small service providers, like this woman:

Stephanie Laitala took out a second mortgage on her home and maxed out credit cards to open Owl Bookkeeping in St. Paul a decade ago. Starting out, she paid vendors and employees before herself, sometimes skipping her own paychecks entirely. The idea of a new sales tax on her accounting services leaves her cold, and one step closer to going back to working for someone else.

Wagner and Laitala joined a handful of fellow business owners Thursday, Feb. 28, at Minnesota Wire to speak out against DFL Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed tax package.

The governor’s plan would lower the state sales tax rate from 6.875 percent to 5.5 percent but also broaden it, applying the tax to clothing sales of more than $100, business-to-business transactions, and memberships to gyms and other organizations.

Someone should tell PiPress writer Fred Melo that taking $2 Billion more out of the economy is not “lowering” a tax.

Question to the businesspeople involved:  how active were you in trying to not get Mark Dayton, Chris Coleman and the rest of them elected?  Just curious.

I got this via email today from a regular correspondent who works for a state agency; I’ll add emphasis to the key parts:

 “A friend of mine at [another state agency] told me about the hype and reality of his situation.”

“The national association to which the state agency is affiliated with has sent out a series of communications intended to raise anxiety about sequestration. The national association declares that almost 1 million vulnerable Americans will lose their health care services due to sequestration. The actual effect on my friend’s local agency is that their federal financial allocation will drop by 4%. This drop is after increases totaling almost one third more in 2013 compared to 2008. The actual amount of the sequestration cut can be absorbed by cutting the local agency’s travel budget by about 40%. The largest cuts at the national level will be to reduce the expansion of the program, not cuts to existing clients.”

Guesstimating the net effect in federal dollars on this state agency; a 4% reduction in aid that’s risen 33-odd% in four years takes the agency back to, er, August of 2012.

Once upon a time P. J. O’Rourke said that this sort of budgeting – “Baseline Budgeting”, where all increases and decreases are relative to the previous budget – allows both sides to look at a budget that reduces an increase, claim simultaneously that the budget increases spending and cuts spending, and both be telling the truth and lying.

Anyone who “survived” the 2011 “government shutdown” recognizes this sort of ofay alarmism.

Hopefully a majority of the rest of the country does, too.

If someone as dense as Maxine Waters were a Republican…:

…oh, why bother. For every example of a dumb Republican hounded from office by the Democrats’ “Praetorian Guard” media, there are several Democrats who are worse, and rule on in splendid invincible density, forever and ever, amen.

John Cusack asks the question most of us had the answer to five years ago.  I add emphasis:

“One is forced to asked the question: Is the President just another Ivy League A**hole shredding civil liberties and due process and sending people to die in some sh*thole for purely political reasons?” asked actor John Cusack in a recent piece published yesterday on TruthOut.org.

Cusack was sharply critical of President Obama’s decisions to continue President George W. Bush’s drone program and continuing the war in Afghanistan.

Yep.

And he’s an Ivy League as*hole for having a Homeland Security director who turns peaceful right-wing protesters into a fearsome fascist terror network, dabbles with reinstating the “Fairness Doctrine”, squatted on the Fourth Amendment, accelerated the militarization of the nation’s police, nationalized healthcare and tore the Constitution to shreds.

Glad you’re finally catching on.