Joe Doakes from Como Park is a pretty peripatetic writer.  Some weeks, he sends me a couple emails on a couple of issues.

Other weeks, I think he may write more stuff than I do.  And he doesn’t actually want to write for this blog, per se; just likes to send “letters to the editor”.

And I figured it was time I pared down some of the backlog.  So today, I’m going to run a slew of Joe’s emails that, for whatever reason, I didn’t run during this past week or so.

Starting with this one:

Come on, give the guy a break. It’s like Elizabeth Warren claiming to be an Indian, Halle Berry claiming to be a Black woman, or President Obama claiming to be an American – it’s a matter of desire, not evidence.

joe doakes

The guy doesn’t look a day over 85…

Jeff Johnson is running for Governor.  Here’s his website, Facebook page and Twitter feed.

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’ll be in from 1-3PM.   I’ll be talking with MN Gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson!
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Brad Carlson is out on assignment this weekend, so Erin Haust is filling in 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:

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Join us!

If the younger generation are our future…

…then we are screwed blue.

Duke student calls Duke alum and media exec to threaten “student action” if the alum, Bruce Karsh of the Tribune newspaper chain, sells the newspaper chain to the left’s current boogeymen the Koch brothers:

Duke University student Lucas Spangher had a 40-minute phone conversation with Oaktree Capital Management CEO and Tribune chairman Bruce Karsh – a Duke grad and trustee – about the possible sale of Tribune’s newspapers to the Koch brothers.

“The conversation was fairly unproductive or negative,” says Spangher, a former Duke Chronicle columnist whose interests include green energy technology. “His primary purpose for calling me [back] was to explain his side of the story rather than listening to my arguments.”

I’m trying to think of a college bobblehead’s argument on any subject, much less business, that I’d listen to for any reason at all.

I’ve got nothing.

Continuing: 

Spangher is personally opposed to the sale because the Koch brothers have given money to support scientific studies that will deny climate change…Spangher says he told Karsh that “students are watching — Duke is aware of the situation.” He adds: “I appreciate the things he’s done for Duke, but if this goes down, there could be student action.”

Goody.  I can hardly wait.

Speaking of “can hardly wait”, I’m going to go long on “rip-proof garment” stocks for when Minnesota liberals get a load of this.

 

Also: Selling the Star Tribune to the Koch brothers some day “could happen” (minnpost.com)

Via XKCD:

Over this past week since the NSA scandal broke, the national Salem hosts – Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt – have been defending the NSA’s stated data-mining practice.  On its surface, the case makes sense; they’re looking for patterns, contacts, things that point to terrorist contact in America.

And as far as that goes, it makes sense.

But I’m amazed that these learned guys have already forgotten the IRS scandal, and for that matter “Joe the Plumber”; once the government has information, it’s only as safe as the most partisan, lowest-integrity people who have access to it will allow it to be.

Joe Doakes from Como Park had some of the same thoughts.  He emails:

Liberals say, re: the NSA scandal: “I really don’t care if the government looks at my stuff if they are indeed looking for terrorists.”  [As we’ve seen, so do some conservatives – Ed.]

“Dear Mr. Jones. While looking for terrorists, we noticed you have done X. We’re forwarding this information to the local newspapers, your wife, your pastor and the appropriate law enforcement authorities. Just letting you know. Sincerely”

“Dear Mr. Jones’ Employer. While looking for terrorists, we noticed Mr. Jones has done X. The fact that you continue to employ him is suspicious, probably evidence you’re in cahoots with him. Please take appropriate action to clear your good name. Sincerely,“

“Dear Senator Z. While looking for terrorists, we noticed Mr. Jones has done X. We also noticed he gave money to your opponent, meaning your opponent condones people who do X. We thought you’d like to know. Sincerely,”

X can be anything unpopular that can be discovered by listening to your phone calls, tracking the GPS in your phone or car, examining your debit card charges, reviewing your e-mail or checking your web-surfing habits.

You bought a brick of .22’s (an arsenal), you clicked on a link in an email and found yourself on a porn site (sex maniac), you bought incandescent light bulbs instead of compact florescent (environmental terrorist), you have Not paid the hazardous waste disposal fee to throw away compact florescent light bulbs meaning you’ve been slipping them into the ordinary garbage (environmental terrorist), you attended a meeting of the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church (homophobe), the NRA (gun nut) or the GOP (all of the above).

If we could depend on the government to keep secret our private information and apply the law even-handedly, maybe it would be okay that they looked at everything. But recent scandals show us we can’t depend on that. Right now, we all hope the sheer volume of garbage collected will insulate us from the wrath being applied to any one of us in particular. Protection in numbers. Since I’m only one of a large flock of sheep, the odds are the wolf will go after another sheep instead of me.

Unfortunately, with the wolf having the power to sort through all sheep for tenderloin quality, the number of sheep provides me no protection. The rational response is tell the government nothing, prohibit them from collecting anything, and punish those who abused our trust.

Joe Doakes

Patterns of behavior aren’t without meaning.  And the Fed’s patterns these days should give any thinking person who cares for freedom plenty of pause.

Just a quick reminder – tomorrow on the NARN, I’ll be talking with Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson.

Tune in early and often!

They said that if I voted Republican, that government officials would launch vendettas against dissidents and dissenters.

And they were right!

A Texas high school principal has launched a vendetta against a student who gave a flaming counterculture speech…

…referencing God and the Constitution

[Remington] Reimer, a senior at Joshua High School, made national headlines on June 6 when officials cut off his microphone in mid-speech after he strayed from pre-approved remarks and began talking about his relationship with Jesus Christ.
Reimer, who has received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, thanked God for “sending His only son to die for me and the rest of the world,” the Joshua Star reported.
The following day the principal met with Reimer’s father and informed him “that he intended to punish Remington for his perceived misdeed.”
“Specifically, he threatened to send a letter to the United States Naval Academy advising them that Remington has poor character or words to that effect,” Sasser told Fox News.

After consulting with a school attorney, the principal temporarily retracted the threat, Sasser said.

Just a liberal snit that got overblown?

Principal Mick Cochran defended the school’s decision to cut off the audio feed.
“The district has reviewed the rules and policies regarding graduation speeches and has determined that the policy was followed last night,” he told the Star.
The Joshua ISD issued a statement to MyFoxDFW noting, “student speakers were told that if their speeches deviated from the prior-reviewed material, the microphone would be turned off, regardless of content. When one student’s speech deviated from the prior-reviewed speech, the microphone was turned off, pursuant to District policy and procedure.”

Nothing, naturally, about launching a vendetta to try to screw up the kid’s adult life.

The only real question I have:  when will Mr. Cochran be hired as the Saint Paul superintendant?

In the wake of the Newtown/Sandy Hook massacre, as America’s political class and educational-industrial complex spun themselves into paroxysms of anxiety working out non-solutions (ramping up regulations on the law-abiding) and anti-solutions (useless fripperies designed to increase the theatrical “sense” of security without actually making anyone safer from the kind of atrocities that happened in Newtown)…

…one Minneapolis teaching assistant, actually did something useful; she brought her legally-permitted gun to school. 

As cops are teaching themselves – and others who are at liberty to use the knowlege – the best way to respond to an active mass shooter is immediately, with lethal force.  It’s ended not a few potential mass shootings, notably the shooting in Portland three days before Newtown, where a citizen pointing a gun at a man who’d just murdered two and still had hundreds of rounds of ammunition was all it took to break the killer out of his fantasy – which is the key step.  Mass-murderers are delusional narcissists lost in a fantasy world; interrupting the carefully-planned fantasy is the key to ending the shooting (at least before the plan reaches its end). 

But that’s just too practical a solution for the Minneapolis school system, or any other, apparently:

A Minneapolis education assistant has been put on a year’s probation and remains on unpaid leave after bringing a loaded handgun to Seward Montessori School the week after school shootings grabbed national attention in December.

The district identified the aide who brought the .357 Magnum gun to the school as Kathleen E. Scozzari, in response to a Star Tribune data practices law request. She is a 21-year district employee.

The 59-year-old northeast Minneapolis resident has been on leave without pay from her $19.90 per hour job since the Dec. 19 incident, in which her gun was recovered from her locked locker in a staff room. The incident occurred a week after the mass school shootings in Newton, Conn.

“She was immediately cooperative. She explained her motives to the police right away,” said attorney Sarah MacGillis, who represented Scozzari. “Her principal concern was protecting the students.”

Kudos to Ms. Scozzari for her motives.

Of course, it’s against the law – and against policy, which is that your children must be compliant, orderly victims, the better to be used as a helpless dependent in life, and posthumous political cudgel.

Provided your children look like the children of NPR executives. 

The story doesn’t mentioned how the staff detected Scozzari’s pistol.  Scozzari has a carry permit.

And I suspect there are not a few other teachers out there, in the wake of Sandy Hook, doing the same thing, only more quietly.

Desperate to keep the stadium finance “plan”…er, afloat, the state is making another big push to try to sell “E-Pulltabs”:

In Duluth on Tuesday night, about 35 charities and bar owners showed up for a chance to test-drive all the electronic pulltab and bingo games now available in Minnesota. They got tips from charitable gambling leaders and bars along the North Shore who use them. They received the latest data from state officials on Minnesota’s most popular e-gambling counties, the effect on charity collections and more.

“I’ve seen the machines before, but I’ve never tried them,” said Duluth bar owner Mike Ronning, checking out the electronic pulltabs. “It’s fun. I just don’t know if it’s right for my place.”

The upshot:  people are still keeping them at arms length.

One wonders if we might have saved a whole lot of trouble doing thisbeforethey made them the key revenue-generator in the state’s Viking stadium jamdown.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Benghazi story keeps getting weirder.

Notice the FBI is on the job. The first 5 suspects have been identified, but not enough evidence has been gathered to try them in court. Enough exists to kill them if the Big O says so, but not enough to capture and try them. Is it just me, or is this administration’s War on Terror policy bewildering?

The guy who made that Mohammad video must have been the greatest filmmaker of all time, to provoke this much response with one low-budget flick.

Joe Doakes

And the “Poles” who attacked the radio station at Gleiwitz must have had some serious momentum to have started all that fuss by themselves.

SCENE:  MITCH Berg is shopping at an electronics store.  Avery LIBRELLE runs into him in the aisle. 

MITCH:  So – your president is kinda going nuts, here, siccing government agencies on private citizens and dissident groups. 

LIBRELLE:  Ha ha, Merg.  All of this surveillance started under Chimpy McBushitler!  If you supported it then, you have to support it now!

MITCH:  For starters, Obama’s ramped it up to a new level; I’ve seen no evidence that Bush took the domestic surveillance to anything like the level that Obama has. 

LIBRELLE:  So there’s an amount of domestic surveillance you deem acceptable?

MITCH:  Sure – with a warrant, and observing the due process of law that’s supposed to be a Fourth Amendment right. 

LIBRELLE: Hah!  So you’re a Fourther.

MITCH:  I suppose you could say that.  Weren’t you a Fourther when Bush was President?

LIBRELLE: That was different.

MITCH:  Ah.  OK.  Secondly, I didn’t support it back then.

LIBRELLE:  You didn’t stop it!

MITCH:  How would I stop government surveillance?

LIBRELLE:  By blowing the whistle.

MITCH:  I don’t work anywhere near the field.

LIBRELLE: What is this “Work” you keep talking about?

MITCH: Fair enough.  Thirdly;  you complained about government surveillance under Bush…

LIBRELLE:  Hissssssssss…

MITCH:  …but Bush did little more than expand on policies that Bill Clinton…

LIBRELLE: Yaaaaaay!

MITCH: …initiated with his 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Counterterrorism act, which greatly expanded the Fed’s wiretapping and domestic surveillance rights.  I mean, do you remember “Echelon?”

LIBRELLE:  The thing that had all you paranoid Faux-News-watching Alex-Jones-listening Bristol-Palin-is-Trig’s-Mom-believing wingnuts pooping in your pants back in the nineties?

MITCH:  Right.  The government’s purported effort to create broad-based systematic eavesdropping on domestic telephone and online communications. 

LIBRELLE:  Yeah! 

MITCH:  So let me be clear here; you supported Clinton’s domestic wiretapping and surveillance efforts?

LIBRELLE:   Of course.  There were Right-Wing militias roaming the countryside blowing up federal buildings and churches and kidnapping Cuban kids. 

MITCH:  Right.  But under Bush…

LIBRELLE: …it was oppression of domestic dissent!

MITCH:  …while under Obama…

LIBRELLE:  …he’s got a war on terror on two fronts – the Middle East and here at home!    And if you oppose him, you support putting bombs in the hands of right-wingers like the Tsarnaev brothers!

MITCH:  Um…gotcha.  What’s in the bag?

LIBRELLE:   All my electronics.  I’m having the service department wrap them in tinfoil.

(And SCENE)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Bush put tracking devices in assault weapons and let them go to Mexico so we could track down drug cartels. Obama gave assault weapons to drug cartels to up the body count to justify gun controls in the US.

Bush tracked a few international calls to find terrorists. Obama tracked all of Verizon’s domestic calls to find terrorists.

Obama supporters are quick to remind us Bush Did It First and when Bush did it, it was illegal but now, it’s not. But there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between the two administrations’ actions. And Bush didn’t specifically run on a platform promising never to do that again.

The Democrats’ logic is: My brother stepped on an ant so I blew up a school bus full of nuns. Because he started it. And while I’m no better than he – in fact, I’m worse – he started it. So what I did was okay.

“Only a little worse than Bush,” that’s the Democrats’ new defense.

Joe Doakes

This is the sort of thing that makes a parent ground their kids.

How do we ground a government, again?

Especially one that is actively suppressing any attempt to ground it?

It was one of those “Mission Accomplished” moments.  But not in a good way.

A week or so I was talking with someone who was considering running for a fairly important political office. 

This person would be anidealcandidate for this office – by which I mean both “as a candidate” and “as a conservative policymaker”.  I’m not going to go into specifics – I don’t want to give anyone the faintest whiff of a thread by which to identify them. 

So what’s holding them back? 

Nope – not the fundraising. 

It’s the trashing they’d expect to get from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota (with the willing connivance of a media that carries ABM’s water). 

And I have to think; that has got to be one of Alida Messinger’s goals – to make running for office as a conservative such an intimately-brutal, self-abnegating torture test that good people can’t justify putting themselves and their families through it. 

Mission Accomplished.

As an annoying leftyblogger might say, “Oh, noes!” – The One’s popularity has dropped below that of George W. Bush:

In a Gallup tracking poll released Tuesday, former-President George W. Bush currently stands with a favorability rating of 49%, compared to 46% who see the 43rd president unfavorably. Meanwhile, another Gallup poll shows President Obama with only a 47% approval rating, with 44% disapproving.

And perhaps that makes sense; Obama has carried on all of Bush’s policies; he merely shifted the bad ones into hyperdrive (Obamacare is really just Medicare Part D strapped to a rocket).

And in retrospect, as bad as Bush was on spending, he was and remains a minor-leaguer compared to the Obamessiah. 

Dare we say…Bush league?
If you think about it, this makes perfect sense.
After all, Obama fooled everyone when he ran as the anti-Bush in 2008.
Everyone thought Obama meant he would be less hawkish than his predecessor. But as we have seen, Obama apparently has no problem killing American citizens via remote control with drones or greatly expanding upon Bush’s surveillance state. This, even though Obama told us he had pretty much won the War on Terror.
Therefore, it appears that what Obama meant by promising to be the anti-Bush is that, unlike George W. Bush, Obama would not get us out of a recession and into many years of economic prosperity. There would also be successful terror attacks on American soil during Obama’s watch and a litany of scandals unseen in almost a half-century.
Maybe the next time a former community organizer raised in a creepy church runs for president, the media will work a little harder to dig into his real agenda.

 When the DFL-controlled legislature started jacking up taxes, we tried to warn ’em.  “North Dakota’s gonna eat Northwest Minnesota’s lunch”. 

But did they listen?

Pffft.  They know what “A Better Minnesota” means, peasant!

Oh, the left trotted out its talking heads.  “It’s really fairly marginal”, said the heads, snug in their academic offices in the Twin Cities.

One of the Marginal Ones up in Moorhead has had enough:

When service station owner Brady Olson decided politicians weren’t listening to him, he took to the airwaves to protest higher taxes that he said were cutting into his profits.

 

“Hi, I’m Brady from Brady’s Service,” he said in a 30-second radio spot. “Minnesota has quietly been turning my business in to a tax collection business.”…Olson and other business owners in northwest Minnesota say those higher taxes make it difficult for them to compete with businesses in North Dakota, where the booming economy has allowed legislators to cut taxes.

To a talking head in the Twin Cities – who, likely, has never run a business or made a payroll – it’s just nickels here, dimes there. 

But nickels and dimes add up:

 With Minnesota legislators recently deciding to increase cigarette taxes by $1.60 a pack, Olson said, “Now they’re in the well again.”

 

Olson was particularly critical of the higher cigarette tax, which on July 1 will be $2.83 a pack. North Dakota’s cigarette tax is 44 cents a pack.

 

As a result, Olson expects to lose a few customers. He said people who buy cigarettes in Fargo will likely buy gas there.

And the bottom line?: 

Olson said every tax increase makes it tougher for his family-owned business to compete with convenience stores a mile or two away in Fargo. He pointed to gasoline as a key example of taxes that make his profit margin smaller than that of a North Dakota business.

I did mention the academics, didn’t I? 

As Minnesota lawmakers struggle to pay for essential services while allowing companies to remain competitive with those in nearby low-tax states, a big question is whether such tax disparities can kill a business.

 

There’s not much evidence to support that, said David Flynn, an economist at the University of North Dakota.

 

“When it makes a difference, they move or they change their business tactic,” said Flynn, who has studied the border business climate. “When it doesn’t make a difference they complain, but we don’t see a noticeable change, a business shuttering the windows or anything of that sort.”

 

Flynn said taxes are generally not the key factor in where business locates. As an example, he cited Minnesota’s lack of a sales tax on clothing. Although North Dakota taxes clothing purchases, there are more clothing stores on the North Dakota side of the border.

And there’s the point that everyone (on the left) misses, always.

There’s more of everything on the North Dakota side.  Moorhead, Breckenridge and East Grand Forks are pale, wan little bedroom towns across the river from Fargo, Wahpeton and Grand Forks (respectively) that are booming, and have always far outstripped their Minnesota neighbors in employment, in business growth, in everything. 

In short, the point isn’t that the border doesn’t reflect the disparities today over taxes discussed last month; it reflects decades of different approaches to taxes and regulation, which the current session will exacerbate.

Read the whole thing – it’s from MPR’s Moorhead correspondent, and it does a decent job of stringing together the story, including the non-sequiturs from the apologists for the Minnesota system.

Arizona man arrested for DUI – with a blood alcohol level of 0.00:

Jessie Thorton, a 61-year-old retiree, was arrested and charged with DUI in Arizona despite having a blood alcohol level of 0.00. The reason the arresting officer gave to Thorton: “I can tell you’re driving drunk by the look in your eyes.”

Thorton, a retired firefighter who, because of his wife’s schedule as an ER nurse, often sleeps during the day, was pulled over at 11 pm in Surprise, Arizona after police officers say they witnessed him crossing the white line in his lane.

“He (the officer) walked up and he said ‘I can tell you’re driving DUI by looking in your eyes,'” Thorton told ABC 15 in Arizona.

Thorton, who had been working out at a nearby LA Fitness, told the officer his eyes were bloodshot because he’d been swimming at the gym’s pool.

One of several lessons for the day follows:

“He (the officer) goes, ‘Well we’re going to do a sobriety test.’ I said, ‘OK, but I got bad knees and a bad hip with surgery in two days.'”

The officer then made Thorton take a sobriety test.

“At one point, one of the officers shined the light in my eye and said, ‘Oh, sorry,’ and asked the other officer if he was doing it right,'” said Thornton.

Talk to your lawyer – or any lawyer – about the advisability of refusing to take the field sobriety test (there are those who say refuse it, period; I’m no lawyer, so don’t take my word for it), but the fact is that “field sobriety tests” are not about determining if you’re sober.  They’re about supporting the officer’s case against you in court.  They are not designed to make you look sober; they are, in fact, not designed to be passed at all.  Go ahead – recite the alphabet backwards right now, assuming you’re sober.

The “war on drunk driving” has slopped across the lane into absurdity.

Read the whole thing.  It gets worse.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

They must have mis-understood the question or the results would not have been so dramatic.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

He’s talking about the poll results in the linked article.

And given the publicity that, er, certain sociological statistics supposedly emanating from the problem that the “bill” would address have gotten in the US (I’m working hard not to give out any spoilers), the result is doubly interesting.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’m sure the Governor’s campaign manager sits in on meetings with Revenue Commissioner all the time. What’s the big deal?

By that, do they mean the actual revenue commissioner, or Alida Messinger?

I mix them up.

One of the DFL and media’s (ptr) hoariest chanting points is the idea that “Republicans raised property taxes!”, and that the DFL – due to its tender regard for the middle class – is hotly engaged in cutting them.

This is a classic low-information voter play, of course; the state doesn’t set property taxes.  City and county governments do.

All the state does is send money, in the form of Local Government Aid (LGA) and Market Value Homestead Credit (MVHC) to cities and counties to subsidize their activities…

…and then, theoretically, those lower levels of government use that money to lower their citizens; since they’re getting money from the state in the form of tax dollars redistributed from the rest of the state, they can tax their own citizens less.

Right?

Well, no.  Usually not.  If you’ve read this blog, you already know more than most Democrat voters; that when LGA was “cut” over the past decade, cities and counties raised vastly more in tax hikes than they’d actually gotten from LGA in the first place.  Such is the addiction of government at all levels to spending.

And now that the DFL has cranked open the spigot again, what’s going to happen?

A PiPress editorial last week notes that “government will cut property taxes about the time I’m caught by paparazzi leaving a Los Angeles club with Amy Adams” is the proper answer to that.  I’ll add emphasis:

A Pioneer Press report this week on 31 metro suburbs cheering the restoration of funding they receive from the state included this note of caution: “There’s no guarantee cities won’t spend all the new state money on services, salaries or public works projects.”

Reporter Bill Salisbury cited findings in a 1990 analysis by the Office of Legislative Auditor that “state aid may boost city spending more than it provides local property tax relief.”

It said cities had used 82 percent of their additional aid to pay for increased spending and only 18 percent to reduce property taxes. Citizens should be prepared to hold their local lawmakers accountable.

But the DFL – and, for the most part, the media – have done their best to diffuse this accountability, to couch this “aid” in terms of “Free money borne down from the sky by unicorns”, rather than money taken from the parts of this state that work – the Twin Cities exurbs and some prosperous outstate communities – and redistributed to smaller towns with lower tax bases (the original intent of LGA) and the Twin Cities and Duluth (which was not, but which became the primary focus of LGA over the past 20 years).

But the editorial is right.  The DFL spent most of the past decade trying to make the case that hiking LGA was a matter of cutting property taxes.

It’s not, and has never been.  It’s been a money transfer, mostly from the parts of the state that are run responsibly, mostly to the parts of the state that are not.  And the smart people already know that this new money is going to overwhelmingly pay for new spending, especially new union-dues-paying government labor.

And as this last election cycle showed us, it’s not enough just to win the smart people.

Demolition starts today at the old Ford plant in Highland Park, at the southwest heel of Saint Paul. 

Because they just don’t build Ford Rangers anymore, due to the vanishing market for half-ton pickups, leading to the complete bagging of the model, I’m sure.

Nothing to do with the state’s business taxes and environmental regulations.  Perish the thought.

I’ve added a new corollary to “Berg’s Law” – especially in light of events of this past seven months and the doddering, bobbleheaded liberal punditry to which Real Americans have been subjected.

It’s the “Fugelsang Corollary to Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection” (Berg’s Seventh reads “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.”)

It reads as follows:

The Fugelsang Corollary To Berg’s Seventh Law – a liberal who uses “I’m happy with my penis size” as a conclusion to a debate on the Second Amendment doth protest too much.

The thing about Berg’s Laws are that they are, in actual practice, absolute and inviolable.

A big chunk of Northern/Northeastern Colorado are actively pursuing secession from the rest of the state, to form – they hope – a 51st state.  Sick of the onrushing dim-bulb “progressive’ statism that’s engulfed the Boulder/Denver/Colorado Springs corridor, with its attendant spending, rapacious taxation and suffocating regulation, the more traditional, rural, conservative parts of the state have had enough.

[Weld county commissioner Sean] Conway said the new laws don’t support the interests of the northern part of the state, which is rich in agricultural history. Conway said that’s why he and others are proposing to break away from Colorado to form a new state.

“This is not a stunt. This is a very serious deliberative discussion that’s going on,” he said. “There’s a real feeling that a lot of folks who come from the urban areas don’t appreciate the contribution that many Coloradans contribute.”

Parts of Nebraska are also apparently interested in joining in on what would be a new state.

It’ll likely come to nothing; most Americans have been painstakingly taught that re-arranging our states in any way equals supporting slavery.

But there’s a historical precedent:

Conway says five of the current 50 states were created through a similar process. He says the proposal is “likely” to end up on a Colorado ballot this fall.

“The whole purpose of doing this is to preserve an agricultural way of life and to protect the energy sector, that we feel is very much under assault,” Conway said.

Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican Congressman from Yuma, told The Coloradoan in Fort Collins he’s not sure how he’d vote on such a measure, but he says he understands why the measure is being floated at this time. He says Democratic leaders controlling the state Legislature and the governor’s office have not been listening to their constituents in rural parts of the state…If voters in those counties decide they want to move forward, then the county commissioners would ask state lawmakers to approve the plan, and then petition Congress for statehood.

Of course, if the proposal ever did make any headway, the urban parts of the state – which depend, as they do in Minnesota, on the exurbs and the rest of the state to keep up a steady stream of tribute to the central government – would no doubt bog the idea down in court actions and worse until kingdom come.

But leaving all that aside – I think it’d be a fascinating idea here in Minnesota.

Clearly, Minnesota is two states that are stuck together, like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, more out of tradition, a historical accident based on lines drawn in the 1840s when Minnesota was a sparsely populated swampy wilderness, than out of any rational political, demographic or social reason that they should be forever together.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have an “East Minnesota” – basically what are now the 4th, 5th and 8th Congressional Districts, the Twin Cities and Duluth and the land they’d need to build their high-speed choo-choo between each other – on the one hand, and “West Minnesota” the rest of the state, form separate states?  Perhaps with a capitol in Rochester?

The new states would make more economic, political and social sense than the current one does; “West Minnesota” could orient itself economically toward the rest of the region, while “East Minnesota” could then endeavor to prove its long-standing premise that it carries the rest of the state.

In fact, this would be true of many states; Upstate New York would no doubt love to be rid of NYC and Long Island; greater California would no doubt love to cast its lot with Arizona, Utah and Nevada rather than be stuck with the endless money suck of Los Angeles.

(Likewise the Dakotas are all wrong; the eastern halves of both states have more in common with each other politically, economically and socially than they do with their western halves, which are also pretty much alike; “East Dakota” and “West Dakota” make more sense than North and South Dakota do).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Student loan fraud has nearly doubled since 2009. Something about 2009 sounds familiar. What happened in 2009?

Oh yeah, that was the last year private lenders made student loans. After 2009, the federal government took it over as part of Obamacare, so the interest paid by students would offset health care costs for poor people.

Either this is a government-run program that’s twice as corrupt as a private-run program, or half as competent. Who could have seen that coming?

joe doakes

Who could have seen it coming?

Less than 47% of the people, unfortunately.