Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Colleges are telling students not to return from Spring Break. Schools are closing.  Employers are letting people work from home.  Everybody is taking the virus seriously.

Except local government.  The courts are open.  They’re going to stay open, all of them, until the State Court Administrator tells them to shut down.

Look, for people who get arrested and need an arraignment to get out on bail, fine, I get it.  You need a judge on duty.  Same for Orders for Protection, emergency guardianship, etc.  But the hearing doesn’t have to take place in person in the courthouse, it could be Skype.

For nearly everybody else – conciliation court, family court, probate, real estate, contract disputes – the hearing is postponed indefinitely.

Why not get out ahead of it now?  Why wait?

I blame Trump.  I suspect Democrats are afraid that if they close down the court system, Trump will pounce on it as an excuse to impose martial law and there will never be another election again.  No, seriously, I really do think they’re that paranoid. After all, that’s what they would do, if the shoe were on the other foot.

Joe Doakes

Berg’s 7th Law.

Nobody’s laughing now.

A friend of the blog writes:

It’s abortion providers day in St Paul. As a woman in St Paul, I am offended with that being a recognized day by the City council and mayor.
I do think women’s health deserves some public recognition, though. And if the city people cared about women’s health, they would focus on things other than abortion.
But, they focus on abortion. Which tells me this is more political than anything. I’m not quite sure where this is going politically, though, in a liberal city that seems to agree blindly with the people they elect. 
As a conservative health care provider who understands that a ban on abortions doesn’t actually save lives (people are going to get back alley abortions if they are illegal), I do support “legal but rare”- counseling, waiting periods, adoption options that actually reduce abortions, etc. Democrats like to say they support these things, too, but then they go and specifically celebrate abortion. I can’t believe they can actually walk proudly into their public offices while supporting things like abortion providers day. There are new lows every day.

The fact that Saint Paul decided to “celebrate” abortion providers shows us it’s not just political, but it’s operating on the same basic level as one of the President’s late-night tweets. It’s there to poke a thumb in the eye of anyone who gives a fetus any moral weight, to show them who’s really boss in Saint Paul.

As this is written, I’m not sure if teachers in the Saint Paul Public schools are going to be going out on strike today. It seemed very likely.

One things for certain: the teachers unions PR people have been earning their money. Minnesota Public Radio’s coverage of the strike in particular sounds as if it is written directly from teachers union talking points.

Seriously. You be the judge:

St. Paul educators lead the nation in a strategy of using their contract negotiations as a lever to not just get better pay for themselves, but to make their schools a better place for their communities, said Lesley Lavery, an associate professor at Macalester College who studies education.

“Teachers are continuing their strategy of bargaining for the common good which they started about a decade rago,” Lavery said. “They’re trying to listen to community members and listen to teachers’ concerns on the theory that teachers are working most closely with students.”

Raise? Hell, you’re almost wanna give them a medal, don’t you?

Seriously – the entire time of MPR is coverage smacks of one pseudo-governmental fiefdom scratching another pseudo-governmental fiefdoms back.

The center of the American experiment has some facts about the SPPS:

On the surface, these salary increases may seem reasonable, but a deeper dive into the numbers provides more clarity around the union’s demands. Pay increases are built into the salary schedule for the first 20-or-so years of a teacher’s career. The 3.4 percent and 2 percent increases would be on top of the salary increase formula already included in the existing union contract, commonly called the “step and lane” progression. Despite participating in countless media interviews leading up to the strike, the teachers’ union has neglected to mention these built-in increases that already exist.

Unexpectedly.

So then you will ignore the Canadians:

For months, young people on university campuses across Canada have gathered to call and text American voters in the hopes of convincing them to support Sanders as the 2020 Democratic nominee.

“I see this as really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not just in American politics, but for left-wing politics around the world,” said Vancouver student Quentin Rowe-Codner.

The 22-year-old Sanders supporter did some research and discovered foreigners are allowed to volunteer for any campaign.

“I decided to start making calls and texts and I found that to be good and rewarding,” said Rowe-Codner. “But I started a little bit isolated just doing it on my own.” 

If the left didn’t have selective indignation, they’d have no…

…well, no. They’d just have undiscriminating blanket indignation.

Elizabeth Warren campaign staffers abuse journalist who “didn’t support Warren” enough.

Politico reporter Alex Thompson, who was assigned by his editor to cover Warren’s campaign, posted screenshots of messages that Warren staffers have been sending him.

Some Warren campaign staffers don’t have a good understanding of campaign journalism.
Not my job to “actively support the candidate that you were assigned”
It is my job to contact as many ppl as possible rather than just rely on what the campaign wants to give me. pic.twitter.com/GjSDQ4i5ii

— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) March 7, 2020

The part that surprised me ? Emphasis added below:

One of the staffers chided him for not “actively supporting” Warren’s campaign while others told him to “eat s**t.”

Thompson explained, “Some Warren campaign staffers don’t have a good understanding of campaign journalism. Not my job to ‘actively support the candidate that you were assigned‘ It is my job to contact as many ppl as possible rather than just rely on what the campaign wants to give me.”

What? A reporter acting lilke…a reporter?

The cynics among you might point out “that’s just when reporting among Democrats; the reporter is probably a Biden or Bernie supporter”. And you have a point; if you’re not a cynic about the coverage of politics in this country, you’re not paying attention.

Still, it’s nice to see the Warren Kidz’ invincible entitlement getting even gently slapped down. Looking at their Twitter feeds, it would appear to have been the first time it’s ever happened; we’re talking about kids who’ve never known anything but Urban Progressive Privilege.

Bernie Bro youtuber Carlos Maza isn’t especially oblique about his politics:

He’s one of those “eat the rich” “socialists”. I’m not going to link to his material – I watched a bit, so you wouldn’t have to.

Anyway he’s a little more reticent about disclosing his own background.

Fortunately, the NYPost isn’t:

Through his clan, the millennial firebrand is connected to multiple Florida mega-mansions, a $7.1 million pad on the Upper West Side purchased under an LLC — and a yacht by luxury boat-maker Donzi.

Maza’s mother Vivian Maza was one of the first employees at Ultimate Software, a Florida-based behemoth which now employs more than 5,000 people. Starting in 1990 as an office manager, she ultimately rose to become the group’s chief people officer in 2004.

In addition to her day job, Vivian Maza also developed a very close personal relationship with company founder Scott Scherr — so close that an independent assessment of the company in 2016 cited the relationship as a “corporate governance concern.”

The report said they believed the pair to be “more than just co-workers” and have a “familial relationship.” The two later became engaged, and the couple has lived together for years, with Scherr being a de facto stepfather to Carlos.

Public records show Vivian, Scott, Carlos and sister Isabel all registered to vote at a five-bedroom, eight-bathroom waterfront palace in Boca Raton, Florida. The property sold in 2018 for $10.8 million according to realty website Zillow. Scherr also unloaded a four-bed, four-bath home in 2015 mansion in Weston, Florida, for $1,850,000 in 2015.

Back when I had my original show on KSTP-AM back in the eighties, I did a little digging into the background of the leaders of the Minneapolis “Backroom Anarchist Center”, a local precursor to “Anti”-Fa. And every single leader whose background I could find hailed from Edina, Wayzata or (for the real blue-collar heroes) Woodbury; they had degrees from Macalester, Saint Thomas or (for the ones that were slumming it) the U of M, to a person.

And it’s no wonder. It takes a lot of money to maintain the “socialist” lifestyle and mindset.

Just another day at the airport for Cenk Uygur, Armenian Holocaust denialist and host of The Young Turks, the screaming, tantrum-throwing inner id of modern progressivism:

Here is a two-minute video @cenkuygur screaming at black airline employees because a flight was delayed pic.twitter.com/dGGFJzTsDt

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) March 8, 2020

Wonder if the poor airline employee IDed as a Young Turks fan will be filing a cease and desist?

You can call it schadenfreud if you want – I’ve met Uygur, and he’s not a lot less annoying in real life.

Or you could call it karma for this glorious evening of self-parody that even the Babylon Bee couldn’t have envisioned:

I say “why choose”?

There is only one reason to not vote for Mark Robinson for Lieutenant Governor this fall.

And that reason is racism.

Carry on.

In the race for the Democratic nomination to run against President Trump in 2020:

• Every black candidate has left the race.
• Every Latino candidate has dropped out.
• Every Native American candidate…hah hah hah, you know where this goes.
• Every woman with a serious shot (thanks for playing, Tulsi) is out.

Bummer Republicans are such bigots.

Michael Bloomberg is out of the Presidential race. There’s $700 million that won’t go toward anti-gun groups, anyway. Of course, he’s always got more.

He also left the good guys this estimable gift – a quote that sums up every “progressive’s” view of what guns are about – in this case, on why he, a man who would disarm Americans the same way he’d deprive them of 32 ounce pop, deserves a bunch of armed security guards:

“Look, I probably get 40 or 50 threats every week, OK, and some of them are real. That just happens when you’re the mayor of New York City or you’re very wealthy and if you’re campaigning for president of the United States,” Bloomberg replied. “You get lots of threats. So, I have a security detail, I pay for it all myself, and . . . they’re all retired police officers who are very well trained in firearms.”

“A well-paid security detail being necessary to secure the well-being of the ruling class against unruly proles, the right to keep and bear arms shall be carefully managed”.

(And if those “retired police” are Bloomie’s former employees, I’m not feeling nearly as safe as he thinks I should be, either in their coolness and discernment or restraint).

…to be fair, this isn’t much different than AOC’s point of view on many topics. 

…When the Democrats we’re concerned about the chilling effect President Trump’s criticism of a foreign service bureaucrat would have? Not withstanding that the ambassador served at his pleasure?

Either do they.

Speaking to a crowd on the Supreme Court steps, the leading Senate Democrat declared: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” He meant Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the newest Justices who were appointed by President Trump.

Mr. Schumer was speaking before abortion-rights activists as the Supreme Court considers whether to curtail the ability of abortion providers to sue on behalf of women seeking abortions—a doctrine known as third-party standing. Mr. Schumer, still addressing Messrs. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, added: “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Between all the Democrats talk of eliminating or neutralizing the electoral college, making the Senate a popular body or illuminating it, and packing the supreme court and they’re not attacking it, it’s almost as if the Democrats have not the faintest interest in checks, balances and federalism.

Chief Justice Roberts was not amused:



This is going to be an interesting summer.



If “common sense” were truly common, we wouldn’t really need a word for it, would we?

If you give people money to do something, they will take it. If you give them more money to do the same thing, they will take more money. Put another way, the more money you provide for a good or service, the more the apparent cost of that good or service will be.

It seems so simple, doesn’t it?

Not simple enough for higher education policymakers, naturally.

Federally guaranteed student loans, as a cause-and-effect relationship, have made a college education unaffordable:

Secured financing of student loans resulted in a surge of students applying for college. This increase in demand was, in turn, met with an increase in price because university administrators would charge more if people were willing to pay it, just as any other business would (though to be fair, student loans do require more administration staff for processing).  According to Forbes, the average price of tuition has increased eight times faster than wages since the 1980s. In 2018, the Federal Reserve estimated that there is currently $1.5 trillion in unpaid student debt. The Institute for College Access and Success estimates that in 2017, 65 percent of recent bachelor’s degree graduates have student loans, and the average is $28,650 per borrower.

The government’s backing of student loans has caused the price of higher education to artificially rise; the demand would not be so high if college were not a financially viable option for some. Young people have been led to believe that a diploma is the ticket to the American dream, but that’s not the case for many Americans.

Financially, it makes no sense to take out a $165,000 loan for a master’s degree that leads to a job where the average annual salary is $38,000—yet thousands of young people are making this choice. Only when they graduate do they understand the reality of their situation as they live paycheck-to-paycheck and find it next-to-impossible to save for a home, retirement, or even a rainy-day fund.

And yet there are far too many people profiting from the current arrangement for any real hope of change.

If you’ve got half an hour, watch this – a fascinating Australian broadcast with a Chinese government official (it’s in English – well, Australian – so don’t get put off by all the Chinese script on the Youtube vid), a couple dissidents, and a few journalists.

And when I say journalists, I don’t mean the weak-tea narrative fluffers that infest most “elite” American newsrooms. The Ozzies actually make the Chinese government rep break a sweat.

As Chinese people get more access to the outside world, and become more aware of how their government really works, and they suffer the effects that the coverup and crony economy (in information as well as goods and services) has on them, the people of Hong Kong are reminding me more and more of the people of Poland 40 years ago – the canary in the socialist coal mine.

It’s going to be an interesting couple years in Asia.

City council in the Finnish city of Oulu devises a radical new approach to the rape epidemic that is no-how, no way associated with migrants pouring into the area with no incentive or intent to assimilate:

Sorry if you can’t un-think this.   But it’s important; if someone in Scandinavia is doing this, it’ll be in Minnesota eventually. 

As Titania McGrath notes, if German women had known this in 1945, the Soviet mass rape camnpaign would have stopped in its tracks. 

There’s a reason Facebook and Amazon use algorithms to determine people’s reactions. Because people’s reactions are predictable.
There has been a constant drumbeat of Coronavirus fear mongering in the media, so today CVS and Walgreens are reporting a shortage of hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Panic buying.
Next up: allegations of price gouging,  attorney general investigations, legislators posturing, and media articles claiming the hardest hit are women, children, minorities, illegal immigrants, and LGBTQ+.
And it will be your fault, you wicked  evil, privileged white man.
Can’t wait.
Joe Doakes 

He’s not wrong.

Last session, the Minnesota State Legislature passed a law purporting to “fight the opioid epidemic”. They had three primary effects:

1. Bringing down a suffocating wave of government scrutiny and legal peril for prescribing “too much” opioid pain relief – in the opinion of a committee that included nobody who suffered from chronic, incurable, intractable pain. Doctors, physician assistants, dentists, pharmacists and even veterinarians could expect warning letters from the state for writing “too many” scrips for opioids – and much worse, if they didn’t comply, including having the Feds investigating their practices, being perp-walked out of their practices, and having their patient records seized.
2. Making it impossible for pain patients to get the prescriptions they need for their long-term, intractable, incurable pain – and impossible to find a doctor that’d see them, given the legal risks to taking on someone whose condition required treatment that’d put the professionals at risk.
3. Most importantly – made legislators feel good. They’d “dooooone something” about opioid addiction. Moooove on.

This past weekend I had Cara Schultz – a Burnsville city councilwoman and cancer survivor – and Rep Jeremy Munson on the show, talking about the problem and a couple of bills that’ve been introduced to try to fix the problem, taking some of the peril out of pain relief for the professionals involved, and changing the composition of the committee that works on the policy to include some people who suffer from actual pain.

It was really good hour of radio – but it got a little harrowing at times. People who couldn’t get relief for years of pain are killing themselves. Callers who’d been suffering for horrible chronic pain told stories that should have “Mengele” in the cast of characters. Give it a listen. If you get angry at the arrogance of the legislature and the bureaucracy, then that’s a good start.

Now, we need you to do something.

Be A Pain

House File 3746 has been introduced into the Health and Human Services committee. It’ll help people with chronic pain that isn’t alleviated any other way to receive pain medication.

It would make sure cancer patients and cancer survivors are able to receive pain medication. The law would require doctors act within FDA guidelines – this is not opening the door to unrestricted Vicodin for every junkie that wants it.

Here’s what is needed.

The House Health and Human Services Committee is holding this Bill hostage. If this Bill doesnt get passed out of committee by March 20th, it’s dead.

And there are lots of people in both parties who are fine with that. It’s an election year, and nobody wants their opponent to call them “soft on opioids”, even though this bill is not that. Anyway – it’s an election year if they can just ignore this, that’s what they’ll do. . So please call them. Dont leave a message with an aid. Ask for a phone appointment with the rep. Speak to them directly. Want to go the extra mile, ask for an appointment. If you are a voter in their area, they WILL meet with you if you request it. Either at the Capitol or in your town. 1. Ask them to hold a hearing on the bill ASAP. If they refuse, ask them why. 2. Ask them to support this Bill. If they don’t ask them why. 3. If they have any concerns about the Bill, let them know Rep. Munson would like to speak with them and should you let him know they want to talk with him to get clarification/answers/work on it?

Here’s The Mission

Here are the members of the House Health and Human Services Committee.

If you are a constituent of any of them, please – this week or next:

1. Make an appointment to either see them face to face, or at the very least a phone appointment. Legislators have a harder time ignoring constituents who are on the phone.
2. Ask them to hold a hearing on the bill ASAP. If they refuse, ask them why. If they explain it, let me know – email me if you need to (ask me in the comments). .
3. Ask them to support this Bill. If they don’t, please ask them why.
4. If they have any concerns about the Bill, let them know Rep. Munson – the author of HF3756 – would like to speak with them and should you let him know they want to talk with him to get clarification/answers/work on it?

I’ll be talking with Rena Moran in coming days. Please try to do the same, if you’re a constituent of any of the HHS committee members.

I stepped in a puddle of vibrancy on the Green Line this morning.

Vibrancy claims one.

West Saint Paul man pleads guilty to vibrancy.

Vibrancy almost claimed someone over by the U of M the other night.

Man vibrates into tent, rapes woman.

Vibrant attacker finds bad vibes.

Human vibrancy charges in the East Metro.

Twin Cities Media and Left (ptr), 2015: “Black Lives Matter were heroes for shutting down I94 during rush hour! Speak truth to power! Up next – Amanda Shapely at the Boat Show”

Twin Cities Media and the Left (ptr) 2020: “Black Lives Matter are a bunch of hooligans! Why weren’t the police able to keep order at Amy’s…er, Senator Klobuchar’s event?”

I’m pondering on what to do tomorrow.

Voting in the GOP primary is relatively pointless – I’ve got my choice of President Trump or The Donald. Hardly worth a trip to the neighborhood high school gym, is it?

On the other hand – paying a visit to the DFL primary it would give me a fairly pivotal choice in affecting the candidate the Democrats put on the ballot this November.

And the choices are enough to get you giddy with excitement:

• A woman whose relationship with the truth makes Donald Trump’s Twitter feed look like a Jordan Peterson video
• Another woman who’s never faced a hostile press question, much less Hillary Clinton’s celebrated “3 AM phone call”
• The mayor of the fourth or fifth largest city in Indiana (oops – missed the boat on that one)
• A 78-year-old man who has always been a walking political joke, and he seems to be into the first stages of senility
• Bernie Sanders, a man whose formidable foreign policy acumen has to elide confidence in even the most ardent skeptic, yessirreenob.

Hugh Hewitt says he plans on voting for Sanders, to do his bit to make sure that there is the Starkist possible choice this November – Between a candidate who has been a deeply imperfect president who has actually done an unexpectedly good job, and someone who is an active, enthusiastic apologist for a system that murdered 100 million people.

It’s tempting. It really is.

And it started as such a big day for A-Klo, who shocked the world by winning the endorsement of the Star Tribune’s editorial board, a group composed of people who used to get blackout drunk with her father. There are no words to describe our amazement that the Strib – a paper that’s served not only as Klobuchar’s PR firm, but the controller of all information about her, thoughout her career, would make such a bold, brave…

…Oh, I can’t keep a straight face any more.

Anyway – the day didn’t end nearly as well, as protesters affiliated with Black Lives Matter, irate over the Myon Burrell case, derailed one of her love-fests in Saint Louis Park last night, bum-rushing the stage and occupying it until the campaign cried uncle:

“The campaign offered a meeting with the senator if they would leave the stage after being onstage for more than an hour,” the spokesperson said. “After the group initially agreed, they backed out of the agreement and we are canceling the event.”

Questions over Klobuchar’s prosecutorial record, namely her handling of the Burrell case when she was the top attorney in Hennepin County, Minn., have dogged the senator since she announced her presidential bid last year. Klobuchar has also faced criticism for declining to prosecute cases involving police accused of using excessive force against black suspects, The Washington Post’s Elise Viebeck and Michelle Ye Hee Lee reported.

How bad was it?

This bad (Twitter link here, in case the tweet below doesn’t display properly)

Bad enough that even the Twin CIties media didn’t try to cover it up.

Yet.

I wouldn’t want to be any of those protesters when A-Klo catches them alone, though.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Experts advise washing your hands to avoid Corona virus, at least 20 seconds, long enough to say the Alphabet or sing Happy Birthday.

I can’t believe Democrats have missed this opportunity to expand the welfare state.  “Because of the wealth gap and income disparity that has existed in America since 1615, and cruelly perpetuated by the Bad Orange Man’s tax-cuts-for-the-rich-only, our most vulnerable people – the poor – who are disproportionately women and children and persons of color and LGBTQ+ – are ill-equipped to survive this deadly virus.  They cannot afford to let the water run all day long.  We must immediately allocate billions of dollars of Water Bill subsidies to help those who need help most.  It’s a matter of survival.”

Although . . . maybe the Democrats are having an internal struggle and haven’t figured out which of their principles polls the best?

“Letting the water run to wash your hands wastes water.  Millions of fish and precious woodland creatures will die of thirst as Americans steal their water and run it down the drain. This species-ist attack on the rest of the planet must end today.  No More Handwashing!”

I’m so confused.

Joe Doakes

Don’t give them ideas, Joe.

Also, as a sidenote to Joe: women? LGBTQ? The poor? People of color?

No mention of transgender people?

Where are you making them invisible? When did you become transphobic. 

Fresh from victory against CNN, Nick Sandman’s attorneys are widening their scope:

Lawyers for Covington Catholic High School senior Nick Sandmann reportedly will file lawsuits against five additional media companies this week for smearing Sandmann last year.

Sandmann’s lawyers submitted a status report with the U.S. District Court in Covington last week that showed that “they intend to file complaints against Gannett, ABC, CBS, The New York Times and Rolling Stone before March 9,” Fox 19

Functional representative government requires institutions that people can actually trust.

And thinking of all the institutions in our society that we just can’t trust…:

• Federal law enforcement
• the educational/Industrial complex
• Academia
• The intelligence community – both politically and in terms of high level analysis

…and, of course, our news media, is one of the more sobering exercises when one wonders what the future of our republic is going to be.