Reading the news here at Shot In The Dark puts you ahead of the entire lefty community.

For example, it was a week or two back that we pointed out that the MinnPost was peddling a poll re the government shutdown that, to be mild, deserved some scrutiny; it was produced in conjunction with Rob Daves, the former majordomo of the Strib’s “Minnesota Poll”, a longtime laughingstock among polls which, I strongly suspect, served mainly as rhetorical Prozac for DFLers.

Sure enough, the various chains of the Minnesota non-profit cluster-hug – and the MinnPost, we must duly note, is a Minnesota non-profit, albeit one that makes magisterial protestations of journalistic detachment – are reciting the chanting point.  The latest?  The “Minnesota Budget Project” – of whom more later.

They write:

Two out of three Minnesota residents want state leaders to balance the budget using a mix of tax increases and spending cuts, according to a new MinnPost poll. It found 66 percent favor a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Only 23 percent want spending cuts only.

If you’re of a mind to connect dots, here’s how it looks; one non-profit – one with protestations of objectivity, but whose entire chain of command and most of whose staff has a long association with at least the center-left – uses a source that, long history of curious and one-sided inaccuracy notwithstanding, has a veneer of “authority” via a long, ostensibly prestigious association with the Star-Tribune; other non-profits, in turn, use that (possibly gravely flawed) information to try to skew public perceptions of a debate of vital importance to the DFL, to whom all of the various non-profits are in one way or anotehr associated.

Now, the MinnPost will protest that they are an independent, detached, “objective” news organization.  For purposes of this discussion, I’ll even take them at their word.

But this “story”, and the chain the information takes, suggests something that we need to look into more deeply; the closely-intertwined nature of Twin Cities’ “non-profit” political action organizations.

More later.