Tremors And Trash
By Mitch Berg
Republican Chad Anderson upsets the DFL – ahd “Democratic Socialist” trash collection – in a special election, flipping Ann Lenczewsi’s seat in a district only marginally less DFL-secure than any other in the first tier of burbs:
With all the precincts tallied in the special election to replace Lenczewski, Anderson netted 51 percent to DFL Bloomington City Council member Andrew Carlson’s 49 percent.
The win gives Republicans, who are already in the House majority, an extra legislative vote this year and a key boost of confidence before November’s election, when the entire Legislature is up for election.
Both House Republican and Democratic-Farmer-Labor campaign arms spent thousands of dollars on ads targeting the Bloomington area, an unusual step in special elections. About 5,000 voters turned out Tuesday.
Losing Lenczewski’s seat has to have people at the DFL’s office on Plato Boulevard changing their underwear today. It’s not quite like flipping a seat in Minneapolis – but it’s not that far from it, either.
Andrew Carlson – the DFL contender, and an incumbent Bloomington City Council member – was instrumental in jamming down Cuban-style socialized trash collection in Bloomington last year.
UPDATE: What could be better than flipping a DFL sinecure? Doing it while spending 1/4 as much as the Democrat did.
More on that tomorrow.
February 10th, 2016 at 8:03 am
Although I couldn’t vote for him, I listened to Chad during the debates held by the Bloomington Chamber. Based on what I heard, I think he’ll be a great conservative vote for Bloomington, so I’m thrilled that he won.
Lenczewski left for a typical lefty hypocritical reason; she joined a lobbying firm. Just love how libidiot Dems decry “special interest groups”, yet many end up working for one.
February 10th, 2016 at 8:10 am
Oh, one more thing.
For those of you that didn’t know this; Chad is Senator Dan Hall’s son in law.
February 10th, 2016 at 8:56 pm
BH429 wrote:
“Just love how libidiot Dems decry “special interest groups”, yet many end up working for one.”
Lefties specialize in hypocrisy. Michael lambasts the wealthy 1%, and when he is reminded that he, too, is a very wealthy man, he responds with something like ‘people like my movies and pay me money to make them. There is nothing wrong with that.’
The idea that virtually any of the 1% could say the same thing is without meaning to him. people like to buy the gasoline the Koch bros. sell, after all.
February 11th, 2016 at 1:30 am
So I’ve become interested in the term ‘democratic socialism.’ Suspicions are warranted because many of those nasty socialist dictatorships had the word ‘democratic’ in the official name of their country (the GDR, for example). Cuba considers itself more democratic than the US because a state official is inserted in every organization. There are no ‘private interests’, the state rules all interactions between individuals and groups, and the state represents the interests of the people, so voila! More democracy than in free countries.
Merriam Webster says:
The number #2 definition is what we already have.
Definition number #1 is the scarier of the two, and I think that is what Sanders means by social democracy (though not necessarily what his supporters mean by social democracy). While socialism may be compatible with democracy, you end up with the problem of factionalism described by Hamilton in Federalists 10 & 11. You have rule of the 49% by the 51%, and chaos as shifting coalitions of interests try to get to the magic 51% number so they can plunder the unlucky 49%. In a pure democracy, you could have the 67% of the voters who are white enslave the 33% of non-whites.
So what Sanders probably means by social democracy is democracy guided by the state. The state would decide what democratic impulses to indulge, and which to forbid. It would essentially be a reordering of society based on the desires of the faction of the people who make up the political class.
And no one is claiming that individual rights and freedoms are compatible with democracy. The social democratic state could, for example, place restrictions on speech if it believed they were necessary to advance ‘democracy.’
Looks a lot like communism to me.