Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Seattle raised its minimum wage to $15 while the economy is in the doldrums and employers are reacting by cutting hours, benefits, and in some cases relocating out of the city.

This is PROOF that employers are robber barons who will do anything to go on exploiting the workers. Plainly, the minimum wage must be set at a higher level of government so employers cannot move to escape it. And benefits mandated, too. With free parking, and overtime. And more vacation.

I’ve noticed the celebratory coverage from Seattle has been really light on impacts.

You would not be the first.

A few weeks back, the Ventura Independence Party, which has throughout its history been a center-left party of people who just loooooove to tinker with the buttons and levers of government – which is the opposite of “libertarian” – endorsed a political newcomer who’s never held elective office, never run for election (that we’re aware of), but who came (along with her husband) from the Ron Paul clique.

Then, the Libertarian party candidate for governor – a party whose existence the regional media barely acknowledges – gets “arrested” while on his petition drive in a DFL-controlled city.

OK, that last might be a bit of a stretch.

But this?  Governor Messinger Dayton battling his “libertarian” streak?  Not so much:

Now as he sets off on his battle for re-election, Dayton says he finds himself increasingly frustrated at the layers of bureaucratic machinery that too can often smother good intentions.

“I vacillate every day from being a liberal to a libertarian,” the governor said in an interview before his overwhelming DFL endorsement for a second term. “Depending on what is happening, I sometimes go back and forth more than once a day.”

Read the whole thing (and to his credit, reporter Baird Helgeson does carry some of the dumbfounded reactions to the preposterous premise).

The DFL is trying to wedge “libertarians” away from the GOP.

Fearless predictions:  the campaign finance reports will show donations from liberals with deep pockets to Hannah Nicollet and to the Libertarian Party candidate.

Why were the DFL’s array of sock-puppets out in such force writing about the GOP convention?

To draw attention away from their own, up in Duluth.

First came reports that the DFL were denying media credentials to reporters from newspapers that had criticized Dayton.

Which is one way of silencing dissent.

Another way to silence dissent?  Agree not to talk about the inconvenient truth – that the DFL is intensely split on  mining.

That’s what the DFL did at their convention in Duluth over the weekend; looked at the upcoming bloodletting between their ultra-liberal, metro-area base – which is as dogmatic a pack of environmentalists as you will find in Democrat politics – and the Iron Range.

The Range, of course, is Minnesota’s red-headed economic stepchild; an area of the state whose economy has been draggy since the demise of the US steel industry forty years ago.

Of course, there is an immense wealth of minerals under the ground in Northern Minnesota, putting thousands of underemployed miners back to work, and creating jobs for many, many thousands more in the many areas that support mining – everything from mine equipment maintenance to truck driving to convenience stores catering to people going to and from work.

But currently – thanks to DFL-authored environmental rules and business regulations – it is literally better business to load ore-rich rock into trains and ship it to North Dakota than to build a processing plant in Minnesota.

So while the DFL had only one significant endorsement battle – to pick a Secretary of State candidate – the battle lines were in fact forming to duke out the battle between blue-collar Rangers and the businesses what want to hire them on the one side, and plutocrat Metro-area environmentalists (including Alita Messinger, who bankrolls Minnesota’s environmentalist messaging as completely as she controls the DFL’s).

And the DFL responded the same way Brave Sir Robin did:

In the end, activists on both sides came to the microphones to urge hundreds of feisty dele­gates to delay the vote indefinitely, a remarkable showing for a party that has seen conventions erupt into damaging fights with political scars that can last decades.

“I think people on both sides understand that we can have respectful differences, but we need to make sure we don’t do anything that is going to take away from our candidates’ ability to win this fall,” said Ken Martin, DFL Party chairman. “So there was a lot of discipline here. People understand the ramifications of the issue.”

Well, we certainly hope they do.

Because those ramifications were:

• To shut everyone up so that…
• …the same pack of Metro-DFL hamsters that have been working to keep Rangers unemployed and on the dole can get re-elected in what should be a tough year for them.

In other words, “Just two more years, Rangers, and we’ll think about it.  Or four.  Or eight.  We’ll get back to you…”

And hopefully it’ll get tougher for the DFL.  Stewart Mills has a genuine shot at sending Rick Nolan packing over this very issue.  More than that?

Think about it, Iron Range.  This isn’t your grandfather’s DFL.  The DFL is controlled by Metro-area poshes who haven’t dug for anything but grad-school grants in their lives.  They hate your guns and hunting and outdoor life.  They hate your largely pro-life beliefs.  And above all, they hate what you and the generations before you try to do for a living.  You, Ranger, are to the Metro DFL what the black or Latino family, or women, are; reliable votes in exchange for cheap lip service.

Money – jobs, in this case – talks.

Iron Rangers should know what walks.

I’m a Protestant.  I’m a Protestant for a lot of really good theological reasons. 

I’ve got nothing against Catholicism; parts of my family are Catholic, as are a strong plurality of my friends.  Like a lot of Protestants, I admired John Paul 2, not leastly because he seemed to not only recognized that all Christians were on the Jesus Team, but  that Protestant beliefs were also a path to salvation.

But I’ve wondered sometimes; if the colonies had been majority-Catholic, would there have been an American Revolution?

I ask it when I read things like this; one of the Pope’s top advisors rips on “liberartarian” beliefs and the free market.

The pope, [Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez] Maradiaga said, grew up in Argentina and “has a profound knowledge of the life of the poor.” That is why, he said, Francis continues to insist that “the elimination of the structural causes for poverty is a matter of urgency that can no longer be postponed.”

 

“The hungry or sick child of the poor cannot wait,” the cardinal said.

So far, so good.

“Solidarity is more than a few sporadic acts of generosity,” he said.

 

Instead, he said, solidarity with the poor, as envisioned by Catholic social teaching, calls for “dealing with the structural causes of poverty and injustice.”

And when people talk “structure”, they’re talking “political solutions”.

And when you talk “political solutions” to economic “injustice”, you’re inevitably talking top-down, government solutions. 

Without exception. 

A charismatic churchman who speaks fluent English, Maradiaga was animated in his criticism of the effects of today’s free market capitalism and he peppered his remarks with digs at economic conservatives.

 

Trickle-down economics, he said, is “a deception,” and he declared that the “invisible hand” of the free market — the famous theory advanced by the 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith — was instead being used as a cruel trick to exploit the poor.

The world is full of cruel tricks, when you’re poor. 

But the free market has virtually eliminated widespread starvation (in parts of the world that have a free market), government, thetop-down solution to “infrastructure problems” inevitably makes things worse for the poor, while enriching the administrative class with the graft that always, always follows political solutions to social issues.

Although my Catholic friends my bristle when I say this, I am exceedingly unimpresssed with Pope Francis’ reign, at least in secular and political terms, so far.

It’s time for us to exercise our Christian charity (or Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or even Skeptic charity – I don’t care much) and help the Democrat party come up with a new slogan.

These are from yesterday’s nomination round:

Vote early, and vote once (which is all the code will allow)!

Polls close at midnight, if I remember to close them.

“An armed society is a polite society” — P. J. O’Rourke.

Firearm deaths are off by just shy of half in the past twenty years, even as the number of guns in civilian hands reaches record raw numbers and post-war percentages throughout America.

And that isn’t even the most spectacular good news.  Non-fatal firearm crime is off by right around 75% since 1993:

The bad news?  :

The media – doing the left’s bidding – has convinced people of the exact opposite. A staggering percent of the population – especially women – believe crime has risen lately. 

Caveats:  the crime rate likely dropped as much for demographic reasons as much as anything. 

Counter-caveats: 

1. There are twice as many gunsper capitain the United States as in 1968.  That’s per capita; in 1968, there was a gun for every two Americans; today, it’s rougly 1:1.  If Michael Bloomberg and Moms Want Action were to be believed (and they are not), the crime rate should have boomed.
2. The study notes that there are many other factors involved, including regional demographics.  Which is behind the left’s claim that “the places with the most guns have the most violence!”.  The rural south has a particularly high murder rate (as we discussed in debunking this chanting point for the first time, a few years back), for reasons that predate guns, and for that matter the United States itself. 

Of course, news like this – and the recent report from the CDC that affirmed that civilian guns do deter crime – is precisely why the left is ramping up their disinformation campaign. 

Because while a lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting its boots on in the morning, once that truth is up and at ’em, it does tend to pimp-slap the lies. 

So keep slapping.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The panhandlers are back, stronger than ever. Used to be one per overpass, now there are four. I didn’t see them this Winter, when they could have made a bundle shoveling sidewalks. Do panhandlers hibernate, like bears, or are they migratory, like geese? Maybe the DNR should put up “No Feeding” signs.

I know the courts have ruled that panhandlers have a First Amendment right to ask the public for donations, but I got hit up in the drive-through lane at McDonalds this morning, which is a little much. At first I thought I might slide out of it: he was wearing an American flag on his jacket so I suspected he was a Tea Partier seeking donations to spread the word about Obama’s fake economic “recovery.” If that had been the case, I could have saved a buck plus sicced the IRS on him because, as everyone knows, Tea Partiers have no First Amendment rights. But no – he only wanted money for the bus to get to the homeless shelter for breakfast, so I was stuck.

This is an area where traditional DFL solutions would work: regulate, license and tax. Permit fees and registration. Make them register as licensed mendicants, same as itinerent peddlers. If they work in teams, they must provide employer-paid insurance, including unemployment and Obama care. They need a permit for each day and location of business. Hot spots require a medallion, just like a taxi at the airport. Also nobody is allowed to give alms in amounts less than $20.00. After all, beggers deserve a living handout. Or livable handout, I’ve lost track of the current terminology.

Mandatory jail for first offenders, escalating punishment for scofflaws. Traditional Liberal solutions can solve modern urban problems. We just need to implement them.

Joe Doakes

They “solve” all manner of free enterprise and prosperity.

Don’t forget – the release party for Katie Kieffer’s first book, Let Me Be Clear, is coming up this coming Wednesday, June 4th from 6-8:30 pm. at Casper’s Cherokee in Eagan (just off Cliff at Nichols).

And I know Katie would love to meet her fans – or make a bunch of new ones.  So  RSVP here. 

Sue Jeffers and Ed Morrissey, along with some other local celebs, will be there.  So, for that matter, will I! 

Come on down!

Actually, make it a two-fer; Mary Franson is having a fundraiser at Paddy McGovern’s, on West 7th in Saint Paul by the Xcel Center from 5-7PM.  I’m gonna try to make it by McGovern’s on my way to Casper’s.  Hope you can too. 

Maybe some of us can caravan!

The Democrats are unveiling a new slogan, we’re told.

If they’re going for something zippy but that is still compliant with “truth in advertising” laws, I’d suggest:

Stay The Curse!

But I’m open to other suggestions.

We may have a poll on this later….

NOTE:  Nominations close at 5PM.  Going to the primary is not an option.

NOTE 2: Nominations are closed (because PollHost has a maximum of 20 entries…)!

I went to the Minnesota GOP convention in Rochester over the weekend.

The atmosphere could hardly have been more different than the 2012 convention, with its factions and intrigues and cliques full of giggly partisans with their secret handshakes and code words.

This year, the code word was “pragmatism”; the GOP base is sick to death of losing.

Dahlbmentum:  The big shock out of the gate?  The collapse of the Julianne Ortman campaign.  She fell under the statutory 20% minimum by the 5th ballot (candidates that don’t have 10% on ballots 2-4, and more than 20% after ballot 5, are dropped from contention).

But St. Louis county commissioner Chris Dahlberg came out swinging, leading the balloting from the first ballot through the end of Friday evening.

Friends from greater Minnesota tell me it could only have been a surprise to people in the Metro; Dahlberg has been working outstate delegates constantly and intensely.  And I think he was a protest vote as well; a backlash against the impression that McFadden – who had said he’d go to a primary if he didn’t get endorsed – was the hand-picked candidate of Norm Coleman and Vin Weber.

If you have any friends who were delegates, they will no doubt tell you all about it today, yawning as they do; the balloting continued until 2AM, with Dahlberg leading by 54-45 when the convention voted to suspend voting until 9AM Saturday; people were getting pretty exhausted.

It may have kept Mike McFadden in the endorsement chase.  We heard that the McFadden people had called out no-show delegates to get to Rochester, and with the morning’s first ballot the race was nearly even; by Ballot 10, McFadden and Dahlberg had switched positions from the night before, with McFadden in the fifties.  Around 1:30 in the afternoon – as the Northern Alliance was on the air – Dahlberg conceded.

So the Senate balloting ended half a day later than expected.

Maneuvering:  Then came the governor race.

The conventional wisdom called it a three-way race between Jeff Johnson, Marty Seifert and Dave Thompson (with Scott Honour and Kurt Zellers skipping the convention and going straight to the primary).

The first ballot reflected this; Johnson had a slight lead, but the top three were bunched in the low-thirties to high twenties.  Rob Farnsworth dropped out after Ballot 2 (he fell under 10%) and sent his delegates to Johnson (to whom it looked like most of them had already gone).

Ballot 3 saw Johnson extending his lead, with Seifert and Thompson falling further behind.

Here’s where it gets complicated.

After ballot 3, Dave Thompson withdrew and, in a superbly crafted concession speech, told his delegates to go to Johnson – strictly because Johnson and pledged to abide by their endorsement – and urged Seifert’s delegates to think hard about Seifert’s position (he’s always said he’d go to a primary if he wasn’t endorsed).

Not long after, Seifert took to the stage, and released his delegates, saying many of them had long drives home.

Jeff Kolb describes the strategy and the effect:

In his speech Seifert released his delegates and told them they could go home. The move was an attempt by Seifert’s campaign to block the endorsement of Johnson. Endorsement requires 60% of the votes that are cast, but that number needs to be more than 50% of the delegate count at the time of the last credentials report. So if enough people leave, it becomes impossible (or very difficult without some crazy rules wrangling) to obtain an endorsement.

The non-Seifert part of the floor erupted in anger.  And it turned out that there were enough votes left to beat the 50% requirement; Johnson topped 60% on the fourth ballot, for the endorsement.

Summing Up:  We’re basically going to go to the primary with the same exact governor field (sans Thompson), and a horde of pundits saying this year was the death of the endorsement process.  We’ll see, of course; if the endorsement gives Johnson the clout to win the primary, then rumors of its death may be exaggerated.

And I have a newfound respect for the likes of Tom Scheck, Rachel Stassen-Berger and Bill Salisbury, who have to not only cover this stuff for a living, but make it readable and listenable to boot.

So we’ll see you out on the primary trail!

The New Orleans school district has just shut down its last five “traditional” public schools and converted the district to 100% charter schools.

And the Educational-Industrial Complex is going to go crazy about it.

With the start of the next school year, the Recovery School District will be the first in the country made up completely of public charter schools, a milestone for New Orleans and a grand experiment in urban education for the nation.

Of course, charters started in Minnesota – and have caught on both in Minnesota and nationwide primarily among “underserved communities” – immigrant, Latino and especially African-American students.  44 of students in the District of Columbia attend charter schools.  But in New Orleans – whose city district was among the worst in the nation before Katrina forced an epic reboot – the district embarked on a radical experiment in school choice.

And it’s galling the hell out of the factory schoolmasters.

The creation of the country’s first all-charter school system has improved education for many children in New Orleans, but it also has severed ties to a community institution, the neighborhood school, and amplified concerns about racial equality and loss of parental control.

I’m not sure if it’s because the media have no idea how education really works, or they’re buying into propaganda from the educational-industrial complex – but they always seem to read their chanting points from Big Education handouts.

Facts:

• Charter schools are in neighborhoods, too.
• Big city public schools, on the other hand, may be in a neighborhood, but they are inevitably controlled by school boards who are beholden not to parents or neighborhoods, but to the special interests that get the board elected.  You think a parent’s voice is heard at Saint Paul’s school headquarters, locked away in their concrete fortress on Colborne street?
• Racial equality?  Parents choose their kids schools.  Black, white, integrated – its’ voluntary!
• Anyone who thinks parents have even the most trivial input, much less control, over big city school systems is too stupid and pathetic to even politely ignore.

More chanting points?   

Critics of the all-charter New Orleans model say it is undemocratic, because leaders of charter schools are not accountable to voters.

Another statement that can only come from the ignorant, the deluded, or the cynical.  Parents at a charter school are 1-2 votes among dozens or hundreds; in the factory system, they’re among tens of thousands or more.

“They don’t answer to anyone,” said Sean Johnson, the dean of students at [one of the ex-public schools], whose father attended the school while growing up in the Black Pearl neighborhood. “The charters have money and want to make more money. They have their own boards, make their own rules, accept who they want and put out who they want to put out.”

And Johnson is lying.  Charters follow the same rules as public schools, and get the same money.

As New Orleans continues to succeed, look for charter opponents – like the DFL – to get more and more desperate.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In 2010, President Obama told NASA chief Charles Bolden that his foremost job was to: “ . . . find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.” But last month, NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan said the agency’s primary focus is humans on Mars by 2035.

Is this another one of President Obama’s famous pivots?  Are we pivoting to Mars, now?

Joe Doakes

We’re lucky he hasn’t pushed an expedition to land on the Sun.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Wisconsin lawmakers want to be certain doctors performing an abortion kill only one person at a time. They require abortion doctors to have hospital privileges, in case something goes wrong during an abortion and the mother needs to be whisked to the hospital.

Planned Parenthood says this places an undue burden on women seeking to exercise their Constitutional right to an abortion, and is suing.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Washington, DC has ruled that a law requiring people to appear in person at a government office during government hours to be photographed and fingerprinted and re-registered every three years, does not unduly burden persons seeking to exercise their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms that someday might have the potential to kill someone in self-defense.

Both rulings are based on the Constitution so here’s my question: Why did the Founding Fathers insist it be easier to kill an innocent, than to prevent an innocent from being killed?

Joe Doakes

you’re only innocent”, really, when your story l supports the right agenda.

Joe Doakea from Como Park emails:

I generally agree with Joe Soucheray. He has good common sense, much of the time. Based on what we know now, Joe’s opinion in this column is wrong.

The California killer was not evil. He was psycho. There’s an enormous difference between doing bad things because you enjoy them, versus doing bad things because the voices in your head enjoy them.

And fighting tooth-and-nail to make sure psychos can’t be compelled to take their meds, then blaming innocent gun owners when the inevitable occurs . . . that’s just wicked. I’m looking at you, Liberals.

Joe Doakes

True.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is a nice change.  The animal-rights crowd paying the circus $15 million on top of the $9 million it already paid, for false accusations of animal abuse.

Joe Doakes

Those “lets have a Nuremberg Trial for Global Warming Denialists!” hamsters might wanna take a gander…
 

Another Robbinsdale police officer breaking the law in Coon Rapids. At least this one wasn’t undercover and didn’t get shot by a citizen.

Joe Doakes

must be something in the water in Anoka County…

Whenever the subject of gun control comes up, the left often reverts to pleading “Look at (fill in the foreign country)”. 

It’s invariably an apples vs. axles comparison, of course. 

But the one that  might – to the underinformed – seem close is the example of Australia, which banned most civilian gun ownership in the nineties.

The left tells us the experiment conclusively proves that gun control reduces violence.

Of course, it’s really just not true.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

You can’t keep convicted murderers locked up for life, it’s intolerable.  They must be allowed day passes to stretch their legs, enjoy life a bit.  They generally come back to prison.  Not all of them, but many.

Sheesh, where is this prison, Stalag 13? Monty Python wouldn’t try this skit, nobody would believe it.

Joe Doakes

The good news?  It’s just the Brits.

The bad news?  The Brits are our canary, and we’re down in the same exact coal mine.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The guy who owns 20% of Heathrow Airport in London is worried about freedom – Londoners have too much of it.

 

Hard to argue with the Middle Eastern foreigner who owns your biggest transportation center.   Great photo, though.

 

Joe Doakes

I guess not every immigrant comes for the ideals of Western Civilization…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

She teased and ridiculed him, which drove him to commit mass murder. It’s all her fault. He’s just another victim – a victim of bullying.

Joe Doakes

But not the wrong kind of bullying…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Strib says we built 3,000 apartment units in the past year but the vacancy rate stayed at 2.5% and rent stayed below $1,000.

That means we’re adding apartments as fast as people are moving in, and that the people moving in are low-income.

Where are all these low-income people moving From?

And why does Minnesota want to build apartments for more of them?

Joe Doakes

Cheap labor?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Racial Equity.  We can’t define it and don’t know what it will do to society, but we’re damned sure going to have it in our communities and in our schools.  Because slavery, and caring. 

“Equity” before the law – blindness to color, gender, status and the like – seems not to be the answer the Big Left is looking for…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Labour Party in Britian proposes to tie the minimum wage to average earnings.

 

Doesn’t this simply shift the fight to Whose earnings?  Everybody?  Only Union?  Excluding Government?  Basing the minimum wage paid by McDonalds on the average wage paid to bureaucrats in Washington – is that sensible?

 

Rife for political manipulation without transparency or accountability, just like every CBO report.

 

I know – let’s tie the minimum wage to an international monetary standard like the Libor, that will eliminate all chance of manipulation of the standard.

 

Joe Doakes

People seem amazed that when you turn things over to politicians, the solution is inevitably political.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Conservative makes film about Obama.  Conservative gets prosecuted for trivial campaign contribution error.   Democrats use the power of government to crush political opponents, same as any banana republic or communist state.

Reminds me of the guy in Washington DC who was convicted of possessing bullets for an antique muzzle-loader while big-shot Democrats go on television waving around assault rifles with impunity.

Good thing I’ve never said anything bad about any Democrat.  I probably broke a dozen laws this morning already, starting with using too many gallons to flush the toilet when I took my morning DFL.

Joe Doakes

All that remains is for Obama to appear on a dais wearing a khaki uniform with eleven stars on the epaulette.