From the Declaration of Independence, with emphasis added :

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

From the Journal – again, with emphasis added:

Copies of two subpoenas we’ve seen demand “all memoranda, email . . . correspondence, and communications” both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees. The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

One subpoena also demands “all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation.” In other words, tell us who your donors are.

Oh, yeah – and since the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel may be one newspaper that might occasionally take its lips off of the Democrat party’s boy parts long enough to worry about that whole “holding government accountable” thing…:

The investigation is taking place under Wisconsin’s John Doe law, which bars a subpoena’s targets from disclosing its contents to anyone but his attorneys. John Doe probes work much like a grand jury, allowing prosecutors to issue subpoenas and conduct searches, while the gag orders leave the targets facing the resources of the state with no way to publicly defend themselves.

And hey, just in time for campaign season!

I’ve always tried to stay hopeful for the future of this country.  But it gets harder and harder every day.

History we can use.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is an actual ad promoting Obama-care.

It’s real (I checked Snopes). The message is that young women should buy Obama-care so they can get free birth control pills and therefore have as much sex as they want, without worrying about the consequences.

Two thoughts:

1. Buying Obama-care to get free birth control pills is like buying a house to get the free toaster.

And

2. Iowahawk is right: it’s amazing how much of modern feminism seems to have been thought up by horny teenage boys.

Joe Doakes

Most of liberalism and its attendant ideologies seem like the product of one form of arrested adolescence – self-righteousness, intense moralism mixed with minimal knowledge, or that know-it-all-ism that every 18 year old has, and that most 55-year-old Saint Olaf grads who still have Wellstone stickers on their Subarus never lost.

…or, alternately, gets paid by the list.

For Buzzfeed writers, either is likely.

Now, I’ll be working on a worst-to-best list for Scrubs.

The Twin Cities’ conservative blog scene has been at it for over a decade now. 

And it was inevitable; from its high point in the mid-oughts, where there were dozens and dozens of bloggers scratching away at all corners of Minnesota’s body politic – from international megablogs like Power Line and Ed Morrissey’s Captain’s Quarters and then Hot Air, all the way down to a maze of smaller niche blogs that live on in memory and the Internet’s wayback machine – time has taken its toll – in both the tempus fugit sense of the term as well as the time it takes people with jobs, families, hobbies and lives to actually write something of any value. 

And so outside of Hot Air and Power Line – neither of which have ever been primarily Minnesota blogs – and Lileks, who covers everything in the universe, sometimes simultaneously – the “thousands lights” of Minnesota local blogging have shrunk to a fairly manageable number.   Some – like the great Sheila Kihne – have taken their talents out into the corporeal world of activism (with a little Twitter to keep people up to date).  Others – the essential Gary Miller, long of Truth Vs. The Machine, has moved is oeuvre to Facebook as his politics have moved toward the libertarian. 

(It’s odd that the solid Big-L libertarians never really developed any serious bloggers in Minnesota.  My observation; most of them don’t seem to believe they need to convince anyone outside the club, and many of them are pretty terrible at it.  Opportunity missed, in my book). 

But many of them are still at it – putting out superior material monthly, weekly, or even more often.  And they’re worth visiting a lot more than you likely do. 

And as one of the ones that has been getting consistently, surprisingly high traffic for better than a decade now, I feel a little remiss in that I haven’t always spread as much attention around as I should have. 

I’m going to try in my tardy way to fix that today. 

Of course, my NARN colleague Brad Carlson has been cranking away pretty non–stop for a long, long time now. 

And Mister Dilletante is still writing superior stuff, on the average more than daily, which is how often you should be visiting The Neighborhood. 

Brad and D are pretty eclectic – music, religion, politics, home and family life, Wisconsin high-school football (or maybe basketball – given the scores D writes about, it’s kinda hard to tell) – which is in fact one of the things I like about the better Minnesota proto-conservative blogs; in contrast to Minnesota’s little collection of herniated-sounding, self-righteous, self-referential, usually shrieky leftyblogs, most of the the conservative-blog holdouts have more than one topic.  In some cases, many, many of them.

Along those lines – Joe Deal’s Red Squirrel Report is all over the map.   And Ryan Rhodes has  been writing longer than me, and has covered a dizzy range of subjects, from politics to intestinal chemical warfare to the trials and travails of owning a small business to, a few years back, the gut-shot heartbreak and slow, miraculous inspiration of the story of his preemie twins. 

If Ryan Rhodes contributes no more than this meme to western cultural life, his life will have been well lived. But there’s so much more at his blog.

And while family and career have slowed down the writing at Fraters to more of a weekly thing, they still cover the waterfront. 

As does one of my favorite low-key reading pleasures, Mary Louise Pivec’s wonderful Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry.  What can I say?  Casual and low-key?  Yep.  And always worth the visit.  I’m always happy I clicked over. 

I’ll never mix up Casual Sundays with Minnesota Hockey Mom – who usually writes about hockey, and, well,  being a mom, but has branched out all over the place – but I read it as regularly as I can as well. 

Of course, there are bloggers who cover shorter stretches of the waterfront with a more focused passion.  Katie Kieffer has slowed down to roughly weekly  on her “business for  young adults” blog, as she works on a very different writing project – but she still sounds off, and is always a delightful read.    Gary Gross has been at the business of covering Central Minnesota politics for almost nine years now at Let Freedom Ring, and his biggest days are (I have this on very good authority) just in front of him.  As in, over the next few weeks.  Seriously – stay tuned.  And Tea Party stalwart Walter Hudson is an essential read at Fightin’ Words.

Of course, John Gilmore at Minnesota Conservatives  is sort of a rhetorical daisy-cutter; he’s had his occasional ready-fire-aim moment, along with his home runs with bases loaded.  Which will his next post be?  It’s always fun to wait and see. 

And the big new event has been Bill Glahn’s blog, perhaps the most essential new political blog in Minnesota since Sheila Kihne was killing giants, 3-4 years ago.  His entire series on following the trail of money among Minnesota’s liberal political “non-profits” is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what’s wrong with Minnesota politics today – and stuff I’d say Minnesota’s mainstream media doesn’t have the balls to write about, except the problem is more a matter of “financial independence from big lefty money” than “courage”. 

Anyway – if you’ve been feeling the need to broaden your horizons, your assignment is clear.

UPDATE:  I knew I’d forget one.  Andy Aplikowski has been doing superior analysis at Residual Forces for roughly forever, and I can’t believe I neglected him when I first wrote this.  My apologies.

Bill Glahn has been doing the work the Twin Cities media hasn’t won’t in covering the big, unseen unreported-on force in Minnesota politics:  Take Action Minnesota.

Even among people who know that TAM exists, I think few know exactly what they’re into, and how the organization works:

Charity Status—whether legal or not, I object to TakeAction’s abuse of its tax-exempt non-profit charity status. Unlike the traditional political party—whose role the group is increasingly displacing —TakeAction can accept tax-deductible contributions from anonymous donors. Despite my best efforts at discovery, we really do not know who contributes the millions of dollars that fund TakeAction’s operations.

Quasi-Party Status—although TakeAction operates much like a political party—recruiting and financing candidates, conducting campaigns, and getting out the vote—it does not have to abide by the same laws on transparency and accountability. It acts as a closed political machine—answering to its (unknown) donors, but not to voters and taxpayers in the same way that the Democrats and Republicans must answer.

They also sit among a warren of offices for similar “progressive” “non-profits” – “ProtectMN”, “Wellstone Action” and others – in the Griggs Building, in the St. Paul Midway.  This isn’t just a happy accident, or entirely the product of the Griggs’ very low rent.  The network shares much more than just an address; phone banks, lists, staff, know-how.

You should read Glahn’s entire series on the subject:

My latest “Who Is TakeAction?” Series:

·         Part 1—Political philosophy

·         Part 2—TakeAction takes over city politics

·         Part 3—All the cool kids went to this year’s Progressive Prom

My original TakeAction Minnesota Series:

• Part 1–Intro and the 2010 election for Minnesota Governor
• Part 2–Follow the Money, as it spins around inside the TakeAction network
• Part 3–Tracking down the money to its sources
• Part 3A—More donor names and dollar amounts
• Part 4–The lobby machine
• Part 5–The 2012 referendum on Voter ID
• Part 6–Updating Part 5 with final 2012 money figures
• Part 7–TakeAction Goes to Washington

The entire series is excellent.

Although Glahn also observes:

[S]imply from a journalistic viewpoint, the rise of TakeAction as a political force is a major story—one that has received almost no coverage from Minnesota’s legacy media. In contrast, oceans of ink have been spilled over the Tea Party and its relationship to the Republican Party. There is a man-bites-dog story waiting for an enterprising reporter to pick it up.

This is not an accident.  It’s a case of Berg’s Seventh Law in action.

And most of the Twin Cities media shares TAM’s mission, whether they admit it or not (and whether their friendly coverage/non-coverage is being purchased by some of the same donors or not).

Matt Damon needs to eat his shoe.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The big news at the Minnesota Continuing Legal Education Real Estate Institute was same-sex marriage passed this Summer and how does that affect spousal rights in Minnesota?

I thought the biggest laugh was this section of Minn. Stat. 517.201:

“Subd. 2.Rules of construction. When necessary to implement the rights and responsibilities of spouses or parents in a civil marriage between persons of the same sex under the laws of this state, including those that establish parentage presumptions based on a civil marriage, gender-specific terminology, such as “husband,” “wife,” “mother,” “father,” “widow,” “widower,” or similar terms, must be construed in a neutral manner to refer to a person of either gender.

Good news, Mitch, you are no longer a Husband or Father, you now are a person of either gender implementing the rights and responsibilities of a spouse and parent.

Frankly, I prefer “Interchangeable Marital Unit” or since we all know which role men are assigned in divorce court: “Cash Cow.”

Joe Doakes

Here’s Senator Ortmann’s campaign site.

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

• I’m in the studio today from 1-3.  I’ll be talking with Senator Julianna Ortmann  about her campaign to topple Al Franken  
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Tomorrow,  Brad Carlson is  back!  I“The Closer” airs from 1-3 Sundays!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six 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
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my new UStream video and chat channel.
• 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!

It’s been a long, long time since TV stations “signed off”, at least in major metro areas. TV’s been a 24/7 business ever since cable became a dominant part of the media world.

But when I was a kid, the sign for “now it’s time to be tired” came when Channel 4 in Fargo would reach the end of its broadcast day – it may have been around midnight, if I remember correctly – and the orchestra would get rolling, and this piece of film would start:

And then, for the next minute or two…:

And then? Lulled by Leo Mann’s voice-over and the silent test pattern, you’d be jarred back to reality by REALLY LOUD STATIC as the carrier signal went silent, turning the frequency over to a universe full of random electromagnetism.

It always felt and sounded jarring; to go from the orderly humdrum of late-night small market TV to the transcendent ethereality of “High Flight”, to silence – and then, cacaphony.  It was unsettling – that feeling of going from “something” to “nothing”, of going from watching a coherent signal from Fargo to random, formless signals that’d skittering about the universe for billions of years, ending up as “snow” on a cathode ray tube. 

I usually wished I’d fallen asleep earlier – and eventually learned to hit the power knob before the “Indian” was done.

Minnesota – the state of 10,000 “progressive” advocacy groups.

And some of those advocacy groups run some very slick, polished, professional PR efforts.  Or – like the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, or “Protect” Minnesota –  at least loud and well-funded ones.

And then there’s the Douglas County DFL. 

The DugCo DFL runs a twitter feed that’s always a useful barometer for whatever the left end of the DFL’s intellectual bell curve is “thinking” has been told by the people paid to do their thinking for them. . 

This went out on Twitter the other day:

@dc4DFL: Australia has a Minimum Wage of $16.88 per hour. Minnesota needs to seriously raise ours. #mnleg #stribpol

Wow.  “Seriously”.  That sounds like quite the imperative.

So let’s compare and contrast.

The unemployment rate for Minnesotans aged 16-24 is 11 percent.  Note that in Minnesota (and most of the US), full-time students aren’t considered “in the labor market” in the same sense as someone working for a full-time living. 

And in Australia?   It’s 19% “not fully engaged” (neither working nor studying full-time).  And if you compare apples to apples – drop full-time students from the “work force” – then close to a third of Australians between the ages of 15-24 are neither working nor studying full time. It’s a little under a third if you count only Australians from 20-24. 

Bear in mind (and I say this more for the benefit of people who’d read what the DugCo DFL says seriously than for most of this blog’s audience) Australia’s economy isn’t currently mired in one of the most dismal recessions in their history.  Their growth was hit by the global financial crisis over the past six years – but not like ours. 

So – even in a relatively healthy economy, Australia’s unemployment and underemployment among younger, lower-skilled workers is much higher than in Minnesota. 

Of course, Australia’s high minimum wage is one of the products of the Labour government…

…that was just tossed at the polls two months ago.  While I saw no evidence that the minimum wage was a pivotal issue, an artificially high minimum wage is part and parcel of the whole raft of “progressive” policies that stagnate economies. 

Uncle Ryan Winkler might want to find himself some smarter stenographers.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It’s nice to have a modern leader in office.

In the olden days, Congress passed the laws and the President faithfully carried them out. Nowadays, Congress passes laws and the President does as he chooses. He faithfully carries out those parts of the law that he likes, when he feels like it, exempting friends and delaying implementation at whim. And if a problem arises, no need to go back to Congress for amendments, he changes the law of the land by press conference.

President isn’t really a fitting title for that sort of leader. King? Supreme Leader?

I’ll go with “Czar”.

They should give the Beltway media really snazzy uniforms. Like the Swiss Guard.

…the President’s “fix” were to throw the entire insurance market into complete chaos?:

The debacle threatens to swamp Obama’s entire second-term agenda, raising questions about his competency and credibility. Polls released this week show the president’s job-approval rating at a historic low and a majority of voters saying, for the first time, that he isn’t trustworthy.
“A White House interested in stabilizing this presidency would want to leave no stone unturned in the effort to deal with both those problems,” said William Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton who’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research center…Insurance companies already have devised plans for next year, received the necessary approval from states and begun to sell policies. They aren’t required to continue to offer their existing policies and state insurance commissioners aren’t required to approve those 2013 plans.

“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers,” Karen Ignagni, the president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents the industry.

What was it that Kevin Williamson said? Politics are the worst possible way to allocate resources?

(SCENE:  at a chi-chi coffee shop in South Minneapolis.  Mitch BERG’s eyes go a little wide with sticker shock before he orders a light roast with room for cream and Splenda)

(As BERG turns to leave, he notices a table with three diners – Carpal POX, Garth MULLER and Viktor VON SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE.  He tries to slip out the door, but MULLER notices him).

MULLER:   Mitch!  Come over here! 

BERG:  OK.  (He puts his coffee on the table and sits).

(more…)

Today is “Give to the Max” day.

It’s basically a fundraising event for non-profits.

“Someone” (a plutocrat with deep pockets) is matching the first $10k donated to “Protect MN” today. This is notable – if they get anything, it’ll be the first donations they’ve gotten from inside Minnesota. *

But the good guys are in the game. MNGOPAC – the MN Gun Owners PAC – is in action, raising funding for good, pro-2nd Amendment candidates.

And it’d sure be cool if the good guys beat the tar out of the orcs today.

Anyway, here’s where you can help out.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Can you imagine a songwriter today trying to sell these lyrics:

“When some loud bragger tries to put me down and says his school is great,

I tell him “What’s the matter buddy, ain’t you heard of my school? It’s number one in the state.”

So be true to your school, just like you would to your girl . . . “

Even with thumping base loud enough to flex the car windows and rattle the bumper, there’s no way this song would sell.

Kids these days.

Joe Doakes

True, but to be fair, a lot of times these days it’s the parents that’re bailing on their kids schools.

While we all knew that Obamacare was going to be a fiasco – and many of us who work in IT were putting specific parameters around the term “fiasco”, by the way – there was always a least one pleasant sideline:

Adriana, the Obamacare girl.

Now, I’ve worked in healthcare IT.  Executives in the trade have this notion that having a non-threatening, smiling woman on a website make the site a more pleasant, less-threatening experience. 

There might be something to that.  I dunno.

There might also be something to making the site actually work. 

But I digress.  According to ABC, Adriana is a Columbian immigrant, a legal resident, married to a citizen, and her photo was obtained through a – what else? – government program trading free family photo sessions for the rights to use the photos on Healthcare.gov.  That’s right.  Our government is trillions in debt, but on hiring camera models, they scrimp like Kazakh rug-traders. 

And  we’re told that  the cataclysmic self-immolation of the site has brought out the crazies – and some of them have found Ms. Adriana:

She learned over the summer that her photo would be on healthcare.gov’s main page, but she didn’t realize it would become so closely associated with the problems of the glitchy website.

“I mean, I don’t know why people should hate me because it’s just a photo. I didn’t design the website. I didn’t make it fail, so I don’t think they should have any reasons to hate me,” Adriana told ABC News.

Anyone who blames a camera model for a system’s technical fubars deserves to lose their current insurance, if you know what I mean.

Ms. Adriana:  Shot in the Dark needs a spokesmodel.  The site works.  And the locals – at least, the ones who agree with me – aren’t batspittle crazy.  And the pay is exactly the same as you’re getting from the Feds.

Por favor – podría considerar mi oferta.  That’s all I’m saying.

One of the Democrats’ most annoying conceits is that they are the party of empirical reason, while conservatives are a bunch of faith-based “anti-science” snake-handlers. 

Now, most of us know better.  And among them, writing at that noted conservative tool The Atlantic, is Mischa Fischer:

In his first State of the Union Address in 1790, George Washington told Congress, “There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature.” He went on to call science “essential” to our nation. Two hundred and twenty years later, in his first inaugural address, Barack Obama vowed to “restore science to its rightful place.”

The president’s insinuation plays into the common perception in the media, electorate, and research community that Republicans are “anti-science.” I encountered that sentiment routinely in nearly a decade working for Republicans on Capitol Hill, and it has become more commonplace in the broader political discussion.

And of course, it’s not that no problems exist:

I’m the first to admit that there are elected Republicans with a terrible understanding of science—Representative Paul Broun of Georgia, an M.D. who claims evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell” is one rather obvious example—and many more with substantial room for improvement. But Republicans, conservatives, and the religious are no more uniquely “anti-science” than any other demographic or political group. It’s just that “anti-science” has been defined using a limited set of issues that make the right wing and religious look relatively worse. (As a politically centrist atheist, this claim is not meant to be self-serving.)

The two solitary issues on which the left banks this meme are evolution and global warming.

As to evolution?  A Christian with a literal, fundamentalist reading of the Genesis story is going to object to the idea of evolution.  But the allegorical interpretation – which is the one the vast majority of contemporary politically-conservative Christians follow – is not in any way incongruent with the idea of evolution.  People of faith – including Christians – have always been leaders at scientific enquiry:

Members of all faiths have contributed to our collective scientific understanding, and Christians from Gregor Mendel to Francis Collins have been intellectual leaders in their fields. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, wrote a New York Times bestseller reconciling his faith with his understanding of evolution and genetics…Yes, an embarrassing half of Republicans believe the earth is only 10,000 years old—but so do more than a third of Democrats. And a slightly higher percentage of Democrats believe God was the guiding factor in evolution than Republicans.

And I’m going to hazard a guess that that percentage breaks down along “allegorical vs. literal reading of the Genesis story” lines. 

And then there’s global warming – the left’s current “which is heavier, a witch, or a duck?” meme:

On global warming, conservative policy positions often seem to be conflated or confused with rejection of the consensus that the planet has been warming due to human carbon emissions…Of the many Republican members of Congress I know personally, the vast majority do not reject the underlying science of global warming … Conservatives believe many of the policies put forward to address the problem will lead to unacceptable levels of economic hardship. It’s not inherently anti-scientific to oppose cap and trade or carbon taxes. What most Republicans object to are policies that unilaterally make it more expensive in the United States to produce energy, grow food, and transport people and goods but are unlikely to make much long-term difference in the world’s climate, given that other major world economies emit more carbon than the United States or have much faster growth rates of carbon emissions (China, India, Russia, and Brazil all come to mind).

Beyond that?  The Left rejects science – or embraces ideas that are no less faith-based and anti-empirical than the most zealous biblical literalist, particularly under the rubric of “social science”, which is frequently less “science” than “applied rhetoric”  – on a raft of issues:

• Pro-infanticide activists plead that life begins when a “fetus” exits the womb, whenever that is, and that a “fetus” in the uterus at 38 weeks gestation is just a mass of tissue – ignoring that preemies born as early as 22 weeks have gone on to live normal, healthy (if very difficult, early-on) lives, and that keeping preemies born after 28 weeks alive is, if not “routine”, at least very common.
• Gender-Identity Feminists have tried for decades to obscure and ignore the fact that men and women are physiologically, biologically, emotionally and intellectually different – and to enact that enforced ignorance in policies that go beyond “equality before the law”. 
• Gun grab activists are almost to a person allergic to valid statistics. 
• Green Energy activistshave gotten the government to “invest” billions in “green energy” scams that can not and will not in the foreseeable future ever address our society’s base power needs, while turning hatred of nuclear power into a near-religious expression of faith over empirical fact. 

And many more; the article compares the two sides’ relative commitment to hard science, and you should read the whole thing.

Moral of the story?  Next time some lefty bobblehead calls himself part of the “fact-based” community, smack ’em with a beaker.

Support for the anti-rights “gun safety” agenda is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Support for gun rights is a mile wide and a mile deep.

Case in point:

Although Mayors Against Illegal Guns’ efforts helped defeat GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, no one seriously expected him to win. However, of the 67 Virginia House of Delegates candidates endorsed by the National Rifle Association and targeted by Bloomberg’s group, 65 won, according to the Washington Examiner.

That’s about a 3% win rate for the splashy anti-rights group – or alternately, 97% for the good guys.

It’s been a tough year for the splashy, big-bucks rights-grabbing group:

After December’s Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the group got behind President Obama’s call for sweeping gun control legislation. But negotiations between U.S. Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., yielded a mere milquetoast background check proposal.

Still, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns website reported that the group got firmly behind the bill and aired a new series of ads campaigning for its passage. When the measure came for a Senate vote, it went down in flames.

It wasn’t just legislation: 

The group then tried to prevent the recall of two anti-gun state senators in Colorado. Although a reported $2 million was spent to support the lawmakers, both lost their jobs, according to Reuters.

About 10% of the mayors are voting with their feet: 

Some 95 key members of the group that targets and criticizes lawmakers backed by the National Rifle Association are losing their title of “mayor.” According to an election review of Bloomberg’s membership list of about 1,000, three quit the group, 69 retired from their jobs, and 23 were rejected by voters.

And that doesn’t even count the ones that have left office for, er, other reasons.

And I bet Michael Bloomberg would call this next factoid an “unintended consequence”, if he were honest enough:

As for that Virginia election, the number of state lawmakers the NRA rated “A” actually grew from 63 to 65 as a result of Tuesday’s election.

More of this.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gun control laws and background checks will be obsolete, as soon as these machines become more widely available.

Of course, ammo is still the weak link.

Joe Doakes

My bet is that the government only allows 3D printers in government offices…

Speaking for myself, I can’t wait ’til Kinkos has 3D photocopiers.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails

. President Obama famously promised: “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” Turns out that was a lie. You can’t keep your policy if you have a “junk policy” that doesn’t cover things which we now pay for. To keep medical costs down, we’re forcing you to shift to Obama-Bronze which leaves less in your pocket, but it’s for the Good of the Nation so suck it up.

The problem with the lie isn’t that it’s a lie. The problem is it enabled Democrats to win election to protect Obama-care from repeal. And once Obama-care is up and running, it becomes the universal justification for all Nanny State intrusion into our lives.

“If you like your job, you can keep it.” Well, no, you can’t. You work a blue collar job. Your job has high risk of injury, which requires medical care, which we now pay for. So to keep medical care costs down, we’re forcing you to shift to janitor which leaves less in your pocket, but it’s for the Good of the Nation so suck it up.”

“If you like your hobby, you can keep it.” Well, no, you can’t. You jog. Your hobby has high risk of injury, which requires medical care, which we now pay for. So to keep medical care costs down, we’re forcing you to shift to collecting Hummels which leaves less in your pocket, but it’s for the Good of the Nation so suck it up.”

“If you like your home security, you can keep it.” Well, no, you can’t. You have a dog or a gun or both. Your home security set-up has high risk of injury (to yourself and also to burglars), which requires medical care, which we now pay for. So to keep medical care costs down, we’re forcing you to shift to a police whistle which leaves your family vulnerable, but it’s for the Good of the Nation so suck it up.”

Reader challenge: think of an activity in your life where Democrats could NOT justify intruding on this basis.

Joe Doakes

Correct though Joe is in  his simile, I’m behooved to announce “this post was brought to you by a grant from the American Troll-Bait Council”. 

Thanks.

Last week, we looked at a troika of “gun rights” groups and their singular and plural records.

Last Tuesday, we showed you a fundraising letter for a group called Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) that Minnesota Second Amendment activists have been getting.  In the letter – from “Minnesota Gun Rights” executive director Chris Dorr – the sky will fall if the reader doesn’t support the group.

Wednesday, we got a perspective from Iowa on the effectiveness of the Iowa Gun Owners (IGO), run by Aaron Dorr, the brother of MGR’s Executive Director – or, according to an Iowa legislator who’s seen it first hand, the lack of effectiveness.

Thursday we looked at the ties between the Dorr brothers and the scandal that rocked the Michele Bachmann campaign in Iowa – and to the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), a group that earned a reputation for having a big bark but not much bite for the relative impotence of its battle against the anti-rights onslaught in Colorado last session.  We also noted that “Minnesotagunrights.org” is actually registered in Van Meter Iowa.

Friday, we showed that an alarmist fund-raising letter aimed at Minnesotans from the NAGR’s Dudley Brown, that was wrong on nearly every possible point – almost too devoid of fact to have come from Heather Martens.

And today?

More on that in a moment.

In Defense:  Last week, a local Libertarian activist well-known for his involvement in the “Ron Paul” clicque takeover of parts of the MN GOP in 2012 posted the following on his Facebook page.  I won’t name the activist here; let’s call him “Paul Robertson” just to avoid confusion.

I’m adding emphasis:

I have met Chris Dorr and and have worked some of the people helping him on projects in the state. A recent hit piece from a Minnesota establishment blogger noted the connection Chris has to the National Association for Gun Rights.

I’m an “establishment blogger?”

Who knew?

I digress:

NAGR operations chief Dudley Brown is an effective political operative who, an as RNC Rules Committeemember, was a leader at the national convention fighting the establishment power grab. One gets onto the RNC Rules committee by earning the support of entire state and CD conventions, something that is impossible for sham groups to do.

And there’s the point, right there.

Forget for a moment that “Mr. Robertson” is referring to Mr. Brown’s role in the picayune rules battle at the last Republican National Convention that pitted “the establishment” against the thin coterie of Ron Paul delegates (a rules change I oppose, for what very little it’s worth).

The two responses to this are:

1. So What?:   The most we can take from “Mr. Robertson’s” statement is that Mr. Brown can organize caucusees into a group that creates a ruckus to no real immediate effect.
2. That’s What!:  Badda bing.  Re-read #1.

In party politics as well as gun politics, Dudley Brown of the National Association for Gun Rights would seem – by his record, even as emphasized by his local supporter, the pseudonymic “Mr. Robertson” – to be about making the big, “my way or the highway” policy pronouncements that drum up much noise but signify little-to-nothing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with noise.  And Minnesota’s current gun-rights groups – MN-RKBA, GOCRA, and even the NRA (which for the first time in my 25 years of watching the issue in this state is finally starting to take an active role at the Capitol) create plenty of it.  Over this past session, they put thousands of people into meeting rooms, and mobilized tens of thousands of phone calls, emails and letters.  Minnesota’s legislators know where the people of Minnesota stand on the issue – which is why even though the DFL controls the legislature and the governor’s office, and their financial supporters are buying support in the mainstream media, the anti-rights agenda was humiliated this past session.

But there needs to be more than just noise.  If a group can’t deliver results at the Capitol in terms of bad policy shot down and good policy enacted, then why support them?

Minnesota’s gun rights groups – NRA, GOCRA/GOAL, MN-RKBA and the rest – have a record of not just making noise, but winning battles.  Of not just getting people riled up, but getting them focused in a direction that, in good times, expands the human right of self-defense.  Never forget – the battle for “shall issue” carry permitting lasted 10 years, from 1995 to 2005.  The goal was achieved not just by getting people riled up – but by focusing all that passion on results.  And frequently needing to do it against adversity; remember, the DFL controlled the legislature before 2002, and have held at least one chamber for all but two years in recent memory.  And we’ve had exactly eight years of conservative-enough governor in the past thirty (forget about Jesse Ventura).

The Challenge:   But there’s certainly a market for groups in any facet of politics, including Gun Rights, that lead with “death or glory”; “our way or the highway”.  Gun Owners of America (GOA) split off from the NRA 20-odd years ago because they thought the NRA wasn’t activist enough.  And they were right.  And the exodus of members concerned with gun rights spurred the NRA to more, more effective political activism.

But hard-line as they are, the GOA has actually had an effect on politics.  They’ve done things; mobilized voters, won some battles through their own lobbying and activism and shoe leather.

I’m not going to tell you what to think about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, the group we met last Tuesday via its alarmed-sounding fund-raising letter to Minnesota gun owners.

I am going to tell you to consider the evidence;

• “Minnesota Gun Rights” (MGR) is tightly related to “Iowa Gun Owners” – their directors are brothers, and both groups’ websites are registered in Iowa (here’s MGR, here’s IGO)
• As related by Iowa state representative Matt Windschitl – a pro-gun legislator – IGO has a record of being utterly useless in actually passing legislation, has actually hampered the passage of useful legislation, and claims credit for passing legislation in which they were utterly uninvolved.   You don’t have to believe me – listen to him yourself.
• The Dorr brothers were intimately involved in the scandal that has dogged Representative Bachmann – the payment-for-endorsement scandal that led to the resignation of an Iowa state Senator.  So someday if Chris Dorr testifies in front of the Public Safety committee, you think Doug Grow (of the Joyce-Foundation-sponsored MinnPost) won’t bring that up to discredit all gun rights advocates?   You think “Protect Minnesota’s” new PR guy Richard Carlbom won’t dangle that factoid in front of Tom Scheck and Pat Kessler?
• Both the Dorrs are closely involved with the “National Association for Gun Rights”, a group run by Dudley Brown.  NAGR – like Brown and the Dorrs – are closely aligned with the Ron Paul camp; that’s not a bad thing by itself, necessarily.  But it does tip you off to their “all or nothing” approach.   And whatever their political allegiance, while NAGR is long on uncompromising rhetoric, when it comes to the day to day politics of winning the legislative battle for our rights, their record gives the appearance of being all moo and no cow, or worse (to say nothing of willing to misrepresent current events and politicians’ positions here in Minnesota).

Let me be clear here, personally – when it comes to fighting the anti-rights orcs, as far as I’m concerned we should let a thousand lights shine.

But Iowa Gun Owners and the NAGR would seem to have a record of underdelivering on its overpromised rhetoric.  And MGR has no record at all, other than of association with the IGO and NAGR.

Ask yourself – should your hard-earned money be going to a run rights group that has an actual record of delivering people, votes, and policy?  Minnesota already has several of those.  We could use more – as many as it takes to get every possible Minnesota shooter to the polls, and toss every possible orc out of the Legislature and the Governor’s office.

Is there any evidence that Minnesota Gun Rights, Iowa Gun Owners or the National Association for Gun Rights have done anything documentably useful?  Bills passed (through their efforts)?  Lawsuits won?  Chambers packed?  Legislators elected?

I’m waiting to see it.

But it’s your call.

To: Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, Hosts, NPR’s On The Media
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Your Concern For Journalistic Integrity

Ms. Gladstone / Mr. Garfield

I caught your story in this week’s edition of On The Media criticizing NBC for paying, not only for footage (of this spectacular skydiving accident) but for exclusive access to the principals to the story.

This – paying for access to news – is one of those things that furrow the brows of journo-wonks.   And the two of you were audibly furrowed.  Gotta hand you that.

So – paying for access to a news story is bad.  Gotcha.

So is being paid by a partisan pressure group to run a news story even worse?

Get back to us on this.

That is all.

…then we need to see a lot more stories like this.

The only truly free society is the one where the government fears the people.

And government today – with police and prosecutors walking all over the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, with our government spying on us and siccing the Tax Police on dissenters, and putting virtually all civil political dissent on government watchlists – is trying to achieve just the opposite.