Conservative bloggers and talk radio have been warning about this for a solid decade now.

Obama telegraphed his intentions re the First Amendment long before he was elected – at least in re dissent.

And it’s still out there:

“I think that there are impulses in the government every day to second guess and look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers,” warned Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee E. Goodman in an interview.

“The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and internet communications,” he added…Goodman said that protecting conservative media, especially those on the internet, “matters to me because I see the future going to the democratization of media largely through the internet. They can compete with the big boys now, and I have seen storm clouds that the second you start to regulate them, there is at least the possibility or indeed proclivity for selective enforcement, so we need to keep the media free and the internet free.”

As the conservative alt-media warned you in 2007, Obama and the libs currently in charge in DC want to sic the Federal Elections Commission on political media – which in a practical sense means “conservative media”, since the liberal media is the mainstream one.

All media has long benefited from an exemption from FEC rules, thereby allowing outlets to pick favorites in elections and promote them without any limits or disclosure requirements like political action committees.

But Goodman cited several examples where the FEC has considered regulating conservative media, including Sean Hannity’s radio show and Citizens United’s movie division. Those efforts to lift the media exemption died in split votes at the politically evenly divided board, often with Democrats seeking regulation.

And as Obama’s presidency grinds down, expect a lot more of this.

(Via Ace)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This law passed, people who claim to be abuse victims can walk away from their leases.

I understand the emotional appeal of this law, but the potential for abuse is obvious. And once landlords get burnt, they’ll be twice shy about renting to people who have boyfriend trouble, or are divorced, or have a history of domestic trouble, the unintended consequence of which will be that the very people we’re trying to protect will find it harder to get a place to live.

I can see that. Why can’t Liberals?

Joe Doakes

Because none of them – at least, the elected ones – have the foggiest idea how business and the markets work?  None of them could identify “perverse incentive” if they saw one?

I could keep going.

It was ten years ago today that a roadside bomb in Anbar province killed two soldiers from the North Dakota Army National Guard’s 141st Engineer Battalion.

One of them, Specialist Brown, was the nephew of two of my high school classmates and of my seventh-grade history teacher. I remember him as a little kid, back in North Dakota in the eighties. His grandfather, as I recall, is a friend of my father’s.

Different people get different things out of remembering.  If nothing else, I hope it prompts you to send a prayer to the Brown and Holmes families, and all the families who’ve lost loved ones in this past decade and a half.

A majority of Minnesotans support Sunday liquor sales.  And every year, as another generation of Minnesotans runs out of beer for a Sunday cookout for the first time, that support rises.

And yet the Minnesota Senate killed an amendment to an omnibus booze bill that would have legalized Sunday liquor sales for the first time.

In a state where taxes are booming and small business is being strangled, it seems like a minor issue – and it is.  But it’s also a no-brainer if you claim to support limited government and scaling back on pointless, mindless regulation – which are things Republicans talk about a lot.

Walter Hudson goes over the reasons,and finds them wanting:

While liquor stores near the border may clamor to compete with stores in surrounding states who enjoy a surge of business from exiled Minnesotans each Sunday, most of the liquor industry likes their state-mandated day off. Union contracts would have to be renegotiated if Sunday sales were legal. Routines would have to be adjusted. Staff might need to be hired and trained. Things would change, and change is icky.

Other special interests include moralizing theocrats who believe the state should force others to conform to their religious preferences, along with mother hens concerned that a seventh day of drinking invites untold carnage…Can you smell the nanny-statism? Do you see the cronyism at work? This is why rank-and-file activists and average everyday Minnesotans find this issue so provocative. There’s no plainer case of special interests wielding undue and wholly illegitimate influence over the rights of individuals.

And you’d think this’d be a no-brainer for Republicans.

And for a little over half the Senate GOP caucus, you’d be wrong.  While the DFL voted overwhelmingly to kill the Amendment, at the behest of their union benefactors and one of the state’s main booze-retail lobbies, the Senate GOP also voted 14-12 to kill the amendment.    Here are the votes.    And the s

And while it is a minor issue – to me more than most, since I go to liquor stores maybe once or twice a year – Hudson explains as capably as any I’ve read why that makes it, in some ways, even more important:

Why does this issue matter? Because if we can’t conjure the political will to overcome special interests in defense of individual rights when it barely matters at all, how are we going to champion rights when the stakes are huge?

If we can’t achieve consensus on the political Right that people should be free to open their businesses when they please, how are we going to win the argument that parents should educate as they please, or that individuals should own their healthcare, or that any of us own our life in any meaningful way? If the legislature can cite some social benefit to banning Sunday sales, why can’t they cite a social benefit to banning anything imaginable?

While 12 of the GOP caucus supported the Amendment (proposed by Branden Petersen, who is fast turning into the Rand Paul of the MN State Senate, and I mean that as a good thing), we need to have a word with Bruce Anderson, Gary Dahms, Michelle Fischbach, Paul Gazelka, Dan Hall (to whom I give a partial pass at voting for a higher principle as a Catholic lay priest, but it’s only a partial pass), Bill Ingebrigtsen,  Mary Kiffmeyer,  Warren Limmer,  Carla Nelson,  John C. Pederson,  Eric Pratt,  Julie A. Rosen,  Bill Weber and the normally-excellent Torrey Westrom.

In an episode that’s getting national attention, near Cooperstown, ND (about 30 miles from the Berg ancestral home), a family dog lays on a lost boy, keeping him warm and dry until searchers could find him. 

Which just goes to show you that even a North Dakota farm dog is smarter and more intrinsically human than some Saint Paul school administrators. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In the last decade, St. Paul has lost jobs six times faster than elsewhere in Minnesota. Oddly, that era was governed by Mayors Randy Kelly (D) 2002-2006 and Chris Coleman (D) 2006-present. How can their enlightened DFL policies be costing us jobs six times faster than outstate?

Bush? Koch Brothers? War on Womyn? Global Warming?

Joe Doakes

my theory: just like poverty, abortion and budget deficits, the decline of our major cities is a bloody shirt that is worth more to the Democrats unsolved than solved.

Gregg Steinhafel resigned earlier this week as CEO at Target corporation.

Many observers – many!  – thought that was only a matter of time before the Minnesota-based retail giant melted down because their grocery sections carried, and continue to carry, no tabouli mix.

Did a complete lack of tabouli at Target groceries seal Gregg Steinhafel’s corporate doom? Some communities think so. Why does Gregg Steinhafel hate tabouli lovers?

You can scour the grocery section of any Target store, anywhere in the country, and find not a single box of tabouli mix.  On Steinhafel’s watch, the chain not only gave away the entire bulgur/vegetable salad market, but told the nation’s millions of tabouli lovers that Target hated them and watned them to die.

Many observers – many, many, many of them – believe this was the turning point in Steinhafel’s doomed regime.

Gregg Steinhafel – the executive who came up one box of tabouli short at the end of the day.

(more…)

At Saturday’s Cinco De Mayo event in Saint Paul, the Fourth CD Republican Party had a total of about twenty people working at their booth, on Cesar Chavez Boulevard just east of Robert Street.  And that was just workers, not counting candidates.

And here was the DFL booth:

Photo courtesty Andrew Ojeda

There were three people there, when there was anyone in the booth at all.

4th CD chair Jim Carson notes “Never saw a candidate nor an office holder [in the DFL booth.  The GOP booth] had MANY candidates and several legislators, a couple of whom (Hall and Pratt) are not running for statewide office. At one point, we easily had twenty people in our 10×20 booth. It was a madhouse.”

I know, I know.  It’s a Democrat town.  It’s going to be a long way back to relevance for the GOP in Saint Paul.  And sometimes the GOP in Saint Paul is its own worst enemy (more on that in a few days, here).

But it was a great event, and a great step forward.

And I gotta ask all you Latino voters on the West Side (and everywhere else in the Metro) – how does it feel being taken for granted like that?

Via MPR’s Bob Collins, shocking news; most journalists don’t call themselves Republicans:

The research, from two professors at Indiana University, contains mostly “duh” conclusions. Journalists think journalism is going in the wrong direction, newsrooms are shrinking, there aren’t many minority journalists, journalists are most likely to be college graduates, men make more than women, and journalists aren’t very satisfied with their jobs.

The Post’s Chris Cillizza headlines that fewer journalists are Republicans now. Just 7 percent acknowledge that.

You knew it, right? Those Democrats in trench coats.

But here comes the whammy you just knew was coming:

And now, the rest of the story. They’re less likely to be Democrats, too, the study says:

Compared with 2002, the percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 8 percentage points in 2013 to about 28 percent, moving this figure closer to the overall population percentage of 30 percent, according to a December 12-15, 2013, ABC News/Washington Post national poll of 1,005 adults. This is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are Democrats since 1971.

MPR included a graphic.

But I’m going to suggest that the study buries the truth in plain sight.

Party affiliation is just one symptom of political belief – and it is an indicator that one can turn on and off and change and re-cast at will.  I could call myself a Democrat – a “Sam Nunn Democrat”, what the heck – if I wanted to.

But it wouldn’t explain much about me, or how I cover the news around me.  Not accurately, anyway.

But I’d suspect giving journalists a survey like this would be a lot more illuminating:

“For each of the following, assign a number from 1-5, where 1 = “disagree strongly”, 5 = “agree strongly”, and 3 = “I’m ambivalent.

1. I believe that “progressive” ideas are usually wrong, and that new ideas should prove themselves before being adopted.

2. Life begins at conception.

3. Education should be localized, if not privatized.

4. Social security should move into the private equity market.

5. The Second Amendment is a right of the people, and does not refer primarily to the police or military.

6. Marriage is primarily about having and raising children.

7. The Federal Government is too powerful; more power should be devolved down to the states, counties, municipalities, and to The People.

8. The nation has need for Natioanal Heath Insurance; Obamacare is a fiasco and should be repealed as quickly and completely as possible.

9. Any government function that can be performed by three or more people in your local Yellow Pages should be eliminated from the public payroll.

10. The state has no business subsidizing businesses (including public media).

Note that none of those ten questions ask anyone’s party affiliation – but they measure the the extent to which someone believes in the free market or statism.

And while the number of “Democrats” may have shrunk (they outnumber Republicans in the media 4:1), I’m going to guess the number of people with scores in the twenties on my test outnumber those with scores in the forties by a solid 5:1.

ADDITION:  A comment below reminded me – while a large number of journalists refer to themselves as “independents” and always have, surveys (especially the seminalLATimessurveys in the eighties and nineties) showed the vast majority of journos who call themselves “independent” but vote Democrat is almost as large as the proportion of stated Democrats versus Republicans. 

Affiliation isn’t the issue; belief, underlying belief and expressed bias are.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Dear Apple,

I need a mood-sensing iPod to play only songs that fit my mood; otherwise, I must click to skip songs that don’t fit my mood and that annoys me, which puts me in a bad mood. For example:

Doctor My Eyes

Doctor Wu

Does Anybody Know What Time It Is (Chicago Transit Authority album long version)

Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina (Patti LuPone version)

and

Don’t Cry for Me, Eileen

should Not be followed by Helen Reddy scolding me “Don’t Cry Out Loud.” Steve Jobs would have understood this. Get on it, please.

Joe Doakes

All I know is come tax time, my MP3 player ran “Money Changes Everything”, “Gimme Some Money” and “Money (That’s What I Want)” back to back.

There are (or were, at least – I can’t speak for how schools teach history today, and I’m not sure I want to know) a number of battles in World War 2 that are (or were) household knowledge, knowledge of which was part of the common cultural currency of being an American.

D-Day and Pearl Harbor are still fairly well-known.  Americans who’ve served, or know people who’ve served, or are casual history buffs, might know about Midway, the Bulge, Iwo Jima.

You usually have to get into more-serious history, or people who’ve followed their own family histories closely, to find people today who know anything about Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Anzio, Monte Cassino, Saint Lo.   People who watched Band of Brothers might know Market Garden.

But even the serious history buffs, when asked about the truly pivotal battles of World War 2, will frequently omit what may have been the most important battle of all – the Battle of the Atlantic.

(more…)

On the one hand, it’s almost a good thing that a school district, somewhere, is trying to teach some kind of critical thinking.  Kids today seem to get virtually none of it.

On the other hand…:

The Rialto school district in California is under fire over a stunning eighth-grade assignment that asked students to write an argumentative essay about the Holocaust and “whether or not you believe this was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth.”

Now, this story is only from the mainstream media – the San Bernardino Sun and KTLA TV – so take it with a block of salt. 

But still…

[the assignment] gives students three sources to use to write their essays. One of the sources reportedly alleges the gassings in concentration camps were a “hoax” and there is no evidence Jews actually died in gas chambers.

The source, traced to a webpage on biblebelievers.org.au, states: “With all this money at stake for Israel, it is easy to comprehend why this Holocaust hoax is so secretly guarded. In whatever way you can, please help shatter this profitable myth. It is time we stop sacrificing America’s welfare for the sake of Israel and spend our hard-earned dollars on Americans.”

The other two sources were from About.com and History.com, KTLA-TV reports.

Teaching the youngsters to deny the deniers?  Plausible.

But how much do you want to bet the kids have gotten to eighth grade without really knowing what the Holocaust is?

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is rigging a small “Snark”-class sailboat out for a day of sailing on Lake Minnetonka.  Among the modifications: the stepping of fore and mizzen masts, and the conversion of all three to square rigging, and a black with white-stripe and black “gunports” paint job, to convert the 14 foot boat into a small model of the USS Constitution. 

BERG notices Avery LIBRELLE paddling past on a recumbent bicycle that’s had two outrigger floats attached to the frame, and paddles clipped to the drive wheel, making the recumbant into a crude pedal-powered catamaran. 

LIBRELLE notices BERG before he can duck below the gunwales of the small boat.

LIBRELLE:   Ahoy, Merg!

BERG:  Er, ahoy, matey.  Interesting ride.

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, I paid for it with a government “green energy” grant.

BERG:  Of course you did.  What’s up?

LIBRELLE:  I’m on my way to a float-in observing the 44th anniversary of the Kent State shootings.

BERG:  Huh.  44 years.  Wow.  I remember seeing that on the TV when I was a little kid.

LIBRELLE:  Further proof that we the Masses need to be on guard against totalitarian rule!

BERG:  Huh?

LIBRELLE: Nixon ordered those murders!

BERG: Er, it was more a matter of National Guardsmen panicking under pressure.  There was no conspiracy – at least, none that 44 years of constant scrutiny has found.

LIBRELLE:  Only if you believe the conservative mainstream media.

BERG:  Er, right.  So speaking of coverups, how about Benghazi?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, stop. That was two whole years ago!

LIBRELLE pedals briskly away – running up onto a sandbar.  

And SCENE. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Judge Guthmann ruled that the Secretary of State had no authority to establish an on-line voter registration site. He ordered it taken down at once.

So . . . where’d the money come from? Misappropriation of funds should be an impeachable offense.

Also . . . to register on-line, you must enter a Minnesota Driver’s License, Minnesota State ID number, or the last four digits of your Social Security number. I thought it was racist to demand that stuff? Shouldn’t racism be an impeachable offense, too?

Joe Doakes

Only the wrong racism.

“Are you that Mitch Berg?”

When I moved to the Twin Cities, I looked in the Minneapolis phonebook. I counted seven Mitchell Bergs. To the best of my knowledge, I was number eight.

I didn’t think about it much, again, until probably the early 1990s, when I was trying to make a living in the IT business. During the five years I was a technical writer, and a few more times when I switched to user experience, I’d go to interviews, and be asked “are you the Mitch Berg that used to work at Control Data”?

Apparently, there is a Mitch Berg in the IT business – or was, anyway.  He is at least a few years older than me, and more of a programmer than an analyst/designer. But a Mitch Berg nonetheless.

And though over the years I’ve met all sorts of people who had met the other Mitch Berg, we’ve never met, nor have I actually met anyone who has but we met the other Mitch Berg. At least, not the Control Data Mitch Berg.

Of course, about the time I was getting into my career as a user experience guy, I got a lot more of the “Are you Mitch Berger, the Vikings punter?” But I haven’t had that one in a few years.

Of course, a year or two ago a number of Twin Cities liberal bloggers and other such bilge hit their pointy little knees every night praying that I was the Mitch Berg, City Councilman of some eastern border town along the St. Croix River, who had apparently resigned under some kind of fire. Because in the narrow, gray, lumpen, claustrophobic public restroom of the Lefty blogger “mind”, a juicy “gotcha” is really the highest joy one can aspire to. But no such luck – Not only have II never been elected to any office, I will never run for one.

And now, I’m told the circle was turning; a colleague of mine knows of a family with a young fellow named – you guessed it, Mitch Berg. I think he may have just graduated from high school, or is at least in that general age bracket.

And I can only hope he goes into IT, and has 10 or 15 years of being mistaken for me.

Or that other Mitch Berg.

Or that other other Mitch Berg.

———-

UPDATE:  The initial draft of this story was written entirely using my phone’s “Voice to Text” feature. As, indeed, some of you noticed.

But my mental reminder to “edit the post before  you publish it” apparently didn’t sink in. 

And it showed. 

(There is no “Natalie Berg” – that I know of…)

The CD4 and CD5 Republican Party committees are presenting the first ever “Liberty Gala”, Thursday night at the MN History Center.

From the event website:

As an unofficial countdown to the 2014 State Republican Convention, you’ll have the opportunity to visit personally with all the candidates, chat with legislators, and meet fellow Republicans from around the area and beyond. You’ll enjoy Hors D’Oeuves, entertainment and several cash bars throughout the multi-leveled great hall and atrium with breathtaking views at every angle.

Or to put it on Bond-Movie-Trailer form…:

Pass the word – and I hope you can make it!

Tickets are on sale through today.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Here is a long-lost photo of President George Washington performing his duties under Article 1 of the Constitution, dealing with The Whiskey Rebellion by intimidating rebels with passages from . . . “Where The Wild Things Are.”

No? Well, maybe it’s Abraham Lincoln urging his generals to fight The War To Save The Union, using tactics from . . . “Where The Wild Things Are.”

Not him, either? Well, it must be someone doing something Presidential. It can’t be someone posing for a silly photo op when there is so much important work the President should be doing.

Oh wait, I know: it’s President Obama, who brought peace to the Middle East, ended aggression in Eastern Europe, resolved territorial disputes in the Far East, balanced the budget and brought prosperity to all Americans, so he now has time to read stories to children.

My bad.

Joe Doakes

Liberals are still yapping about President Bush reading “My Pet Goat” as the terrorists attacked New York.

Of course, when he opened the book, the US had been at peace for ten years, we were at the tail end (we now know) of the Peace Dividend boom, and people were talking about “permanent prosperity”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Minority students disciplined for protesting discrimination.

Who trumps what?  We already know that on the national stage Black trumps Woman for the throne.  But how about locally?  Liberals applying the “shut up and sit down” routine against other liberals.  Who could see that coming?

Were disciplinary letters sent last month, when students and faculty protested Condoleeza Rice’s speech?

How deeply does the U of M’s hypocrisy run . . . at taxpayer expense?

Joe Doakes

I’m tempted to ask Joe if it’s a rhetorical question.

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.
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Tomorrow,  Brad Carlson is on “The Closer”!

(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 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!

Ahem:

“I oppose National Popular Vote (NPV), and I urge you to oppose it too.  It will centralize power  on the coasts”.

Now, to wait…

 In the previous installment of this series, we discussed the idea that the word “no”, in hands of a free consumer, is the most powerful idea in the world

With a simple “no”, free people have brought monopolies that defied government’s gnarliest efforts to their knees. 

With a series of simple “nos”, free people with free choice have forced business to get faster, more nimble and responsive and…

…not necessarily “smaller”, but much less ponderous.  In a world full of companies who are trying to get a world full of people to “yes”, the Eldorado goes to first place; second place is the set of steak knives.  We all know who gets third.

Politics, of course, is the one area where people’s ability to say “no” is subsumed to the will of not so much the “majority” as “the minority that best accretes the monopoly on power to itself”.  Which is, of course, why government is so big, slow and stupid. 

Now, as we established in the first part of this series, if Americans could say “no” to each other, many of them would.  If US citizens could “spin off” fellow citizens who don’t match our long-term strategy the way a company CEO spins off a division that isn’t fitting in with the enterprise’s long-term strategy, many of us would do exactly that.

The Creatively Destroyed Union:  The rest of the world – everything from Microsoft to the USSR is breaking into smaller, more sustainable pieces.  It works because existing business models have become obsolete – where “obsolescence” is defiend as “people are saying no to them, and “yes” to other things”

 Why not same for nations?

The Best And Worst That Can Happen:  What might make sense?

Viewed from a high level the “United” States of America seems to have broken into five different nations in all but name and tax code.

The various parts, for my purposes, will use the names I give them.  Call ’em “working titles”. 

The United States of Krugmania (Blue):  The northeast part of the country would likely gravitate, socially and economically, toward the European social democracies that it’s been aping – and getting the rest of the country to ape – for the past 100 years or so.  The new country’s main exports – unemployable grad students, grievances and mainstream media – will provide an excellent income for the few people who will be able afford to be citizens. 

The South (Red): Pro-law-and-order, not above using big government to enact policy (usually social, sometimes economic),but otherwise generally pro-business, The South is already well-placed to be the part of the country to which the Northeast and the  United Dudes (see below) outsource their manufacturing. 

The United States of the Great Lakes (Brown):  Rust-belt states with, frequently, rust-belt policies (Scott Walker’s Wisconsin notwithstanding), the USGL may be politically schizophenic – but it makes sense economically.  Provided they don’t mind paying for Detroit and Chicago. 

Real America (Gray):  Rolling in energy wealth, blessed by its libertarian leanings with little government overhead, RA will be an export powerhouse. 

The United Dudes Of Existence (Yellow): With an economy focused on entertainment, water resale and alternative therapeutics, the UDE’s tax rates may approach 100% – but how about that weather?

———-

Well?  Would it be any worse than what we have?

To: Daniela Hernandez, Dartmouth PC natterer
From: Mitch Berg, campesino ingobernable
Re: Nuestra dva sprache

Ms. Hernandez,

Language is the supremely public good.

Nobody owns it. Even the French discovered that the full weight of national power can go so far in governing how people use your language.

Now, you’re the woman who’s been nattering at the supremely gullible administration at Dartmouth (“the poster child for the higher-ed bubble”) about peoples’ use of Spanish terms like Fiesta.

Since you’re only getting a degree from Dartmouth, I’ll explain this slowly:  people adopt works from other languages, usually (not necessarily always) because the word works better than the local word.

So you have ever, even once, sat in your sauna drinking rooibos tea from an itsy-bitsy bamboo demitasse listening to the music blare from the frat, you can thank the Finns, Hungarians, South Africans Afrikaans speakers, the Dutch, French, the Dutch again, and Latin.  Or stop oppressing them.  Your choice. 

And since, like all the words above, your fellow PC indoctrinees students are using “Fiesta” to mean roughly exactly what it means in Spanish, I suggest you relax.  Or contact your ombudsman…

…oops. Norwegian.

That is all.

Two new blogs to report:

“No Longer I Who Live“, by John Stewart – who presided over “Night Writer” for a long time.  John was recently diagnosed with a serious illness – but the blog doesn’t take the usual approach to the subject.

And “Nooj” is in the process of slowly launching “Bar Chords” – about the law, rock and roll, and…well, we’ll see.

Of course, some of my favorite “old” blogs keep chugging away; Bill Glahn (perhaps the only investigative reporter working in Minnesota today), Mr. D, Katie Kieffer, MLP and of course the Fraters are still writing regularly – sometimes very regularly.

I don’t oppose unions.

Unlike the vast majority of Democrats, I’ve actually belonged to a union.

Unions can be – can be – a vital part of a free labor market.

But they usually aren’t.  And when people encounter a product or service that’s of no worth to them in the free market, they can say no – provided the political process hasn’t removed that option.

In Michigan, which just passed a “right to work” law granting workers the option to say “no” to unions, 80% of healthcare workers have done just that:

That means some 44,000 workers did not wish to be part of the SEIU, when given the choice.

Ted O’Neil, media relations manager for the Mackinac Center, said plummeting SEIU membership is a clear sign that the forced unionization of home healthcare workers was never something those people wanted.

“All 44,000 of those caregivers who were originally forced into the union are free to go back and join,” he told The Daily Caller. “It’s very telling of what worker freedom means to people.”

Drop the word “worker”.  When people have the freedom to say “no” to things that don’t work for them, real change happens.

I bring this up because it’s an issue that should resonate with Minnesotans, where the DFL is trying to force healthcare and childcare workers into AFSCME and the SEIU, respectively.  They’re doing it for exactly the same reason as they did it in Michigan – to skim dues for their management and the Democrat party that gives them all the goodies:

The dues-skimming scheme was set up in 2006, after the SEIU identified home-based healthcare workers as a potential revenue source. Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm helped facilitate the process by setting up a by-mail election for union representation for home-based caregivers. Some said they never received ballots and were unaware of what had happened.

The Minnesota plan – which is currently under a court injunction – would be exactly the same scam.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama isn’t just the First Black President, he may also be the Most Belligerent. Aside from the ordinary garrison troops at US bases and embassies around the world, and not counting bombing sorties flown by drones, this President has dispatched American troops to put boots on the ground in conflicts in:

Iraq

Afghanistan

Pakistan

Kyrgyzstan

Egypt

Libya

Yeman

Sudan

Uganda

Central African Republic

Poland

and with this week’s the new agreement, the Philippines.

Can he get another Nobel Peace Prize, please? Because for a man this devoted to peace, one just doesn’t seem like enough.

To be fair, he didn’t start all of these conflicts, and wasn’t the first to send US troops to all of them.

To be even more fair, he got elected promising a foreign policy that relied less on military force and breaking things and making them go boom.