“No guns in capitol!”,
Michael Paymar says amid
Capitol Police.

Mulligan Session!
The only real question is
which “Fail” to start with.

The NARN is Fair-bound!
Again, the constant battle
against the cheese curd.

Chaos in Egypt.
How often must I explain
it’s not that “Morsi”.

35 choices
as Minneapolis votes.
“Instant” runoff? Hah!

The history books
Say we’re created equal.
Some, moreso, I guess.

Ryan Winkler called
Clarence Thomas “Uncle Tom”.
Thomas: “Sorry – who?”

Zygi Wilf? A crook?
He seemed so above reproach!
Who woulda thunk it?

Governor Dayton
sees Alida, starts to sweat.
“No more shock collar!”

Welcome, darling kids!
Time to meet your new sitter
Sal “Bug-Eyes” Rossi.

(more…)

To: Representative Ryan “Beavis” Winkler”
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Your Minimum Wage Thing

Rep. Winkler,

Here’s what technology has to say about your minimum wage hike.  Read it and think. 

That is all.

PS:  No, it’s not.  I know you’re not paid to think about these things; yours is not to reason why.  But those who support you?  Maybe not in your stu-foresaken district, but in the rest of Minnesota?  There might be hope.  And so I write.

The inevitable result of across-the-board minimum wage hikes?  Fewer minimum wage jobs.

Case in point; as minimum wages around the country rose during the 2000s, McDonalds started pre-cooking its hamburger patties, so they’d only need to be reheated in the stores.  This got rid of most of the traditional “burger-flipper” jobs, the ones that liberals sneered at but provided hundreds of thousands of opportunities for teens and others entering and re-entering the workforce to learn how to show up for work on time and do a good job at something. 

But there was always the front counter.  Right?

Maybe not; McDonalds is testing thousands of touch-screen kiosks in France:

The move is designed to boost efficiency and make ordering more convenient for customers. In an interview with the Financial Times, McDonald’s Europe President Steve Easterbrook notes that the new system will also open up a goldmine of data. McDonald’s could potentially track every Big Mac, McNugget, and large shake you order. A calorie account tally at the end of the year could be a real shocker.
The touch screens will only accept debit or credit cards, adding to the slow death knell of cash and coins. This all goes along with an overall revamp of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide aimed at projecting a modern image as opposed to the old-fashioned golden arches…

Winkler is spending his between-session time agitating for a minimum wage hike bill. 

Minnesota’s young and poor should ask him to stop doing them any more favors.

Maybe if there was a touch-screen kiosk of some kind…

I’m not a person who nurses a lot of peeves.

I’m pretty much live and let live; I have my foibles, you can have your peccadillos. 

But if there’s a trait among journalists that annoys the piddle out of me, it’s their tendency to imbue journalism with the attributes of a holy calling, and its institutions with a significance that was absurd even back when “journalism” ostensibly meant something. 

But there’s never been anything quite like this.

Ruth Marcus writes in RCP, with emphasis added:

Don Graham’s decision to sell The Washington Post was his reverse Sophie’s Choice moment.

She had to decide which cherished child to save and which to send to the gas chamber. Don and the Graham family weren’t forced to make an anguishing choice but did so anyway. They relinquished the newspaper they love in order to protect it.

If the comparison sounds hyperbolic, you don’t know the Grahams.

And Ruth Marcus is as tone-deaf as Ryan Winkler. 

If it were any other business – including yours – it’d be just the daily thrum of business happening to theWaPo. 

Do newspapers have any greater significance to society, especially the parts of society that don’t work for the newspapers?

If that was ever the case, it was long before the Big Media whored itself out to the Big Left.  To the extent that newspapers ever played a role in civil society, it was when they still saw themselves as a check and balance on government.  Rather than just conservative government. 

Good riddance.  Hope Bezos shuts it down.

The American Left is obliging enough to give me a world of confirmation that Berg’s Seventh Law (“When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”) and its various corollaries are pretty much dead-on reflections of human nature filtered through leftist politics.  Berg’s Seventh gets most of the attention. 

But Berg’s Eighth Law has had its place in the sun this past few weeks. 

The law reads “American liberalism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from a sociopathic disorder”.  And the left here in Minnesota’s been flying their evidence like a battle flag this past few weeks.

From Ryan Winkler’s “Uncle Tom” jape, to the flurries of racist hatred facing every ethnic-minority conservative, from Michelle Malkin to, lately, Larry Elder (and don’t get me started on the political misogyny shown to conservative women), it’s been a banner couple of weeks for lefty bigotry. 

I, for one, have a dream; that my children will grow up in a world where they’ll be judged not by the political label that Media Matters and “ThinkProgress” put on them, but on the contents of their hearts…

Two weeks ago, when Representative Ryan Winkler shocked the parts of the world that can still be shocked by referring to SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas as an “Uncle Tom” – something even junior-high kids in North Dakota thirty-something years ago knew was a racist slap – the Twin Cities media did what it always does.

Cover for the Democrat. 

(And the Twin Cities leftyblogosphere?  To them, Clarence Thomas, a phenomenally accomplished man, is no different than Michelle Malkin or Star Parker or Alan West; a target for endemic bigotry first, human last, maybe.  When will Eric Pusey condem the racism on his “blog?”). 

Speaking of accomplished people, Chris Fields – a very talented politician who gave Keith Ellison as good a run as any Democrat’s had in the 5th CD lately, and is now the Secretary of the Republican Party of Minnesota and who is a businessman, a retired US Marine and, as it happens, black – wrote an editorial about how very, very objectionable the Winkler flap was.

Now, it’s the mushy institutional left, people like the Star/Tribune editorial board, that constantly remind us we need a “dialogue about race”.  Of course, when they say “dialogue”, they really mean “monologue, with our side doing all the talking and your icky conservatives doing the listening”

But in re the Winkler incident, it’s seem the Strib wants no monologue, much less “dialogue”.  Chris FIelds wrote an excellent op-ed about the subject of Winkler and his ignorant racist jape.  It was picked up by other papers – the Pioneer Press and the Mankato Times both ran it (it’s below the fold here). 

But the Strib?  Not so much as an impolite “F Off”. 

Winkler, who represents the lily-white, mushy-left heard of the Strib’s prime demographic, has gotten an unqualified pass from the entire Twin Cities media, which focused on his instant contrition in a way that’d would have seemed less jarring if it were something the Strib, the City Pages or MPR ever did for, say, Todd Akin’s verbal japes or Tom Hackbarth’s post-divorce wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time awkwardness or anything Ann Coulter has ever said, in or out of context. 

But it wasn’t. 

So why didn’t the Strib run Fields’ op-ed?  Is Fields not a compelling commentator on the issue?  Is his perspective not important?  Was his op-ed not well-written and excellent food for thought?  Yes, yes and yes.

Does it afflict someone the Strib’s editorial board and their friends very much want to see remain politically comfortable?  A thousand times yes. 

And so down the memory hole it, and the entire incident, will be shoved. They have their priorities.

Fields op-ed is below the jump.

(more…)

To: Rep. Ryan “Beavis” Winkler
From: Mitch Berg, uppity non-Harvard prole
Re: Uncle

Evasive action, stat!

That is all.

I’m of several minds about MNGOP Chair Keith Downey’s broadside at the MNDFL and the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” in the Pioneer Press last Thursday. 

On the one hand, acknowledging it is a sign that the Minnesota Left’s campaign – relying as it does on relentless name-calling and smearing – works. 

On the other hand – it does work.  You don’t need to be a pollster to know that the “Emmer Had Two DUIs” jape likely cost Tom Emmer the 2010 gubernatorial election all by itself. 

And on the third hand, not acknowledging it won’t make it go away. 

And there’s a fourth hand.  We’ll come back to that. 

Downey:

Demonizing personal insults flow far too easily from Minnesota Democrats these days. The latest: Rep. Ryan Winkler calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas “Uncle Thomas.” Offensive enough on its own, worse, Winkler’s attack is but a symptom.

DFL Party Chair Ken Martin and Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s Executive Director Carrie Lucking have perfected a systematic program in Minnesota that takes political name calling to a new level.

This strategy is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” Alinsky’s Rule #5 states: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Rule #12 says: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Ken Martin at a meeting with Alida Messinger

And the two – Martin, who’s spent a career as Alida Messinger’s cringing lapdog and bag man, and Lucking, a woman who gives off that “my life peaked in high school” vibe, a former junioir high social studies teacher who was a spectacular two-time failure as a campaign manager (oh, crapt, now I’m doing it.  I’m sorry) – have certainly raised name-calling to a low, profane art.

The Democrats’ implementation in Minnesota is intentional and well-developed:

Step one: Attach a negative personal label to an opponent that appeals to emotion and has nothing to do with governing.

Step two: Spend a few million dollars to make the label stick.

Step three: Have your candidates pretend to take the high road.

Although Ryan Winkler never got that memo.

Representative Winkler

DAMMIT!  I’m doing it again!  The slope of civility sure is slippery!

Of course, neither Lucking nor Martin can do anything else; Conservatives on Twitter know that neither of them has the brains or the information to debate at a level higher than name-calling…

…sorry.  I slipped again. 

Downey:

Unfortunately, this formula has proven effective for Democrats. It is now a rapid-response machine. As any Republican candidate steps forward to run for public office in 2014, within hours, usually minutes, Martin and Lucking flood the online and traditional media. Here is a recent sampling: “just another rich guy who likes to fire people”; “just another hypocritical, Gingrich politician”; “vulture capitalist and Minnesota Romney wannabe #2”; “anti-government government official”; “isn’t quite ready for the bright lights”; “failed businessman, failed gubernatorial candidate and right-wing talker”; “a voice for the hard-core right-wing, not hard-working families”; “an extreme choice for Minnesota.”

As I noted a few weeks back, it’s having a noxious effect on politics in Minnesota; I know personally of one potential candidate for significant office for which the specter of the ABM smear machine is a serious consideration; they seriously wonder if it’s worth the damage their families will take at the hands of the droogs that take ABM’s lies seriously. 

Minnesota voters deserve better, and even in politics the truth matters. Public officials and candidates put their lives and careers on hold to step forward and serve the people of Minnesota. Attack their ideas, fair enough; but build a messaging machine to insult them personally?

Now, let’s depart for a moment from Lucking and Martin who, let’s be honest, are just sled dogs pulling the way their musher tells them to. 

Who lets them get away with it?

The media brahmins in the editorial suites at 425 Porland, 5th and Cedar and 7th and Cedar like to wax rhapsodic about the need for civility, an informed electorate, and a better brand of politics – usually intoned while looking down their aquiline noses at (conservative) talk radio. 

And conservatives – most of talk radio and their alternative media included – almost invariably take the high road.  And the closer you get to the seats of conservative power, the less likely you are to see anyone getting their hands dirty. 

Ken Martin, Carrie Lucking and “Governor” Dayton getting ready for a meeting with Alida Messinger.

But ABM’s toxic sleaze campaign is paid for by Mark Dayton’s ex-wife and the group lavishly funded by his biggest supporters –  the unions and liberal plutocrats – and run by the significant other (girlfriend or wife – Lucking is cagey on her domestic specifics) of “Governor” Dayton’s Chief of Staff. 

And you will find not a f****ng word about it in the Twin Cities media. 

Not one word.

Rachel Stassen-Berger at the Strib, Bill Salisbury at the PiPress, the entire “Capitol Stenography Press Corps”, everyone is hands-off ABM.  TheMinnPost?  Hell, that’s turned into another DFL PR firm.

Nobody prodded the coziness of the relationship – one might call it “chain of command” – between Dayton’s office and the attack-PR firm his ex-wife pays his chief of staff’s girlfriend/wife/whatever to run. 

It’s another example of the media abdicating what some used to call its “responsibility”.

It was 150 years ago today, as the Battle of Gettysburg wound into its second day, that General Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of the Union II Corps, saw that the neighboring III Corps under flamboyant General Daniel Sickles had moved forward without communicating Sickles’ intentions to Hancock, leaving a yawning gap in the lines between II and III Corps as a Confederate force was moving toward the area.  Left open (and it would be left open; Sickles’ corps, exposed in open ground, was mauled and rendered nearly combat-ineffective in a matter of minutes), the gap gave the Confederates a wide-open shot at taking Cemetary Ridge, which would break the Union defensive line. 

Hancock knew reinforcements –  20,000 men from V and VI Corps – were on the way, hoofing it in from the north and east.  But he needed to buy time.

He ordered the nearby First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment to charge into the gap and drive off the encroaching Confederate brigade until help could arrive.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

To people whose understanding of the US military comes from its post-Spanish-American-war form, the Army before about 1914 is a confusing enigma that reflects American political sentiments that started after the Revolution.

The “United States Army” in 1861 was a  relatively tiny regular force of long-service career soldiers.  Confoundingly, the “US Army” as a whole played very little role in the Civil War; it mostly guarded major federal installations, Washington, and the frontier (including a garrison at Fort Snelling).  With the exception of artillery units and a few specialist units (signallers, telegraphists, some logistics units, and a couple of elite “Sharpshooter” regiments, who were analogous to today’s Airborne Rangers and which were very active in the early years of the war), the US Army played little part in the Civil War.

The bulk of the Union Army (and, likewise, the Confederate Army, which was organized on similar principles) was made up of the mass of “volunteer” units raised by the states, and then tendered to the Federal government for periods spelled out in the various units’ terms of enlistment. 

One of those units – the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment – put together from ten companies, each of around 100 volunteers from towns around sparsely-settled frontier Minnesota.  The companies were:

• “A” and “C” Companies (Captains Alexander Wilkin and Wiliam Acker) from Saint Paul
• “B” Company , Capt. Carlyle Bromley, Stillwater.
• “D” Company, Captain Henry Putnam, from Minneapolis.
• “E” Company, Captain George Morgan, from the then-independent city of Saint Anthony, which would one day become Northeast Minneapolis.
• “F” Company, Captain William Colvill, Red Wing.
• “G” Company, Capt. William Dike, from Faribault.
• “H” Company, Dakota County (Hastings), under Captain Charles Adams.
• “I” Company, from Wabasha, under Capt. John Pell.
• “K” Company, from Winona, commanded by Captain Henry Lester. 

In those days, commanding a volunteer unit – as a captain with a company, or a Colonel in charge of an entire Regiment – was good for immense name recognition, so many politicians called in markers for the charter to commission regiments of their own.  Junior officers and non-commissioned officers – the captains, lieutenants, sergeants and corporals – were usually elected by the men.  Military experience was by no means a prerequisite. 

The First Minnesota was fortunate to to have been organized by Colonel Willis Gorman.  A 45-year-old self-taught lawyer from Kentucky who’d been a five-term Indiana congressman, Gorman had left Congress to volunteer as a private in the Third Indiana Regiment to serve in the Mexican-American war; he’d been promoted to First Sergeant by the end of his one-year enlistment, and elected Colonel of the new Fourth Indiana in his next year.  That’s right – from private to full colonel commanding a regiment in under two years.  Gorman led the Fourth Indiana in the capture of Mexico City.  After the war, he returned to law and politics, including two more terms representing Indiana in Congress, followed by four years as governor of the pre-statehood Minnesota Territory.  After statehood, he remained in Saint Paul, building a law practice until the start of the Civil War.

As the war started, Gorman raised the First Minnesota.

And by a fluke of fate, as Gorman was mustering the ten companies from around the southeast part of the state into a regiment, Governor Alexander Ramsey was in Washingon on business with President Lincoln.  Getting news of the commencement of hostilities and of Gorman’s new unit, he was the first of the Union state governors to offer his state’s troops to the Federal government for service in the new war; he was literally in the right place at the right time.

So the First Minnesota was, in fact, the first unit in the vast army that would, over the next four years, fight the bloodiest conflict in American history.

Gorman was not a popular officer with his men, initially – but by all accounts, he ran the First Minnesota like a military unit – which was by no means a given in the vast army of volunteers that was forming.  Having been in combat, Gorman was remorselessly professional, and demanded the same from his officers and men.   He worked relentlessly, according to the history of the unit, to drill into his men not only the rote tactics of the day, but the esprit de corps that so often separates the successful military unit from the pack of uniformed rabble.

This paid off at the unit’s first engagement, the First Battle of Bull Run.  The battle – in the no-man’s-land between the duelling capitols of Washington and Richmond – was a rout, with most of the Union army, commanded by their inexperienced officers and elected NCOs, breaking and running away.  The First Minnesota distinguished itself by being the one of the last Union units to leave the battlefield, and one of the few to leave it in good order – as an organized fighting line, rather than a panicked mob.  Indeed, the other two regiments in its brigade had run away, leaving the Minnesotans to carry on alone, suffering among the heaviest casualties (49 dead, 107 wounded) of any regiment in that first disastrous battle.   Gorman was promoted to Brigadier General after Bull Run. 

More casualties – 16 dead and 94 wounded – followed at Antietam, in 1862. 

But it was 150 years ago today that the Regiment earned its place in history.

———-

The story is being told all over Minnesota, in all sorts of media, today; General Hancock, seeing General Sickles’ III Corps moving forward, and then retreating in disorder, and the brigade of Alabama troops under Brigadier General Wilcox approaching, grabbed the only organized troops he could find – eight companies of the First Minnesota, with 262 men – and ordered them to charge at the 1200-strong Alabama brigade, to try to buy enough time for reinforcements to plug the gap.

The Regiment – led by John Colville, who’d started the war as the captain in charge of Company F, been promoted to Major after Bull Run and Lieutenant Colonel and second-in-command in time for Antietam – set off at double-time, with bayonets fixed. 

The map of the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The little blue arrow between Cemetary Ridge and LIttle Round Top is the First Minnesota.

The Alabamans blazed away at the Minnesotans, who pressed the attack home with a ferocity that sent the larger force reeling, even though outnumbered by 5:1.  Brigadier General Cadmus Wilcox, the Confederate general, wrote in his official report a few weeks after the battle (I’ll add emphasis):

“This stronghold of the enemy [i.e., Cemetery Ridge], together with his batteries, were almost won, when still another line of infantry descended the slope in our front at a double-quick, to the support of their fleeing comrades and for the defense of the batteries [he’s referrring to artillery, here – Ed].

Seeing this contest so unequal, I dispatched my adjutant-general to the division commander, to ask that support be sent to my men, but no support came. Three several times did this last of the enemy’s lines attempt to drive my men back, and were as often repulsed. This struggle at the foot of the hill on which were the enemy’s batteries, though so unequal, was continued for some thirty minutes. With a second supporting line, the heights could have been carried. Without support on either my right or left, my men were withdrawn, to prevent their entire destruction or capture. The enemy did not pursue, but my men retired under a heavy artillery fire, and returned to their original position in line, and bivouacked for the night, pickets being left on the pike.”

The charge drove back a force five times the size of the First.  It bought the time needed for Hancock to get the reinforcements into the line and consolidate Cemetary Ridge. 

And the First Minnesota stayed right there; the 47 men still standing (along with F company, which had been on detached duty on July 2, and missed the charge, bringing the “regiment’s” strength back up to around 80) were waiting when Lee launched General Pickett’s division on its ill-fated charge up the ridge the next day, July 3, the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy”.  At it was here, where the First was stationed, that Picket’s charge came closest to success; part of Pickett’s division reached the Union line, and spilled through; once again, a counterattack by the First Minnesota (commanded now by Captain Coates, who’d started the war in “A” Company) drove back the Rebel spearhead.  Private Marshall Sherman of “C” Company captured the battle flag of one of the attacking units, the 28th Virginia, winning the Medal of Honor (one of two for the Regiment that day;  the other went to Corporal Henry O’Brien, who, wounded in head and hand, picked up the First’s fallen flag under ferocious fire.  The Minnesotan kept their flag, and the Virginians’ as well.  It remains in Minnesota to this day, at the Minnesota Historical Society, the subject of some controversy between Minnesota and the Commonwealth of Virginia. 

The 28th Virginia’s regimental standard, seized at Gettysburg 150 years ago on July 3. Every so often, groups of Virginians make noises about wanting the flag back. They are met by shouts from vainglorious Minnesotans who urge them to march up here and take it. Apparently Ryan Winkler is now a Second Amendment advocate. Who knew?

The regiment served until the following April, when its enlistment ended.  Most of the volunteers served in other Minnesota units for the rest of the war; Colville became a legislator.

It’s amazing, the number of First Minnesota veterans who went on to prominence in the new state after the war.  This roster site has a fascinating list of biographies of an amazing number of First Minnesota veterans.  It’d be a fun game to see how many of these men have streets named after them in your community.

SCENE:  At the DFL headquarters, on Plato Boulevard in Saint Paul.  Chairman Ken MARTIN is sitting in his office.

(Carrie LUCKING of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota walks in.  MARTIN springs to attention, salutes).

LUCKING:  As you were.    (MARTIN sits as LUCKING settles into an overstuffed leather recliner)

LUCKING:  So what’s going on?

MARTIN:  Well, we’re hitting the GOP over their War on Womym, we’re telling Minnesotans that taxing the 1% will make them taller and smarter, and…

LUCKING:  That’s not what I mean, and you know it.

MARTIN: Beg pardon?

LUCKING:  Beavis is at it again.

MARTIN:  Beavis?  You mean Represntative Winkler?

LUCKING:  Yes.  His tweet yesterday embarassed the party.  Summon Bakk and Thissen.

MARTIN:  Summon Bakk and Thissen!

(Tom BAKK and Paul THISSEN enter the room.  They stand attention and salute LUCKING, who returns the salute.  They remain standing).

LUCKING:  Explain!

(BAKK smirks at THISSEN with a look of badly-concealed contempt).

THISSEN:  I don’t know, your highness.

LUCKING:  Doesn’t he know he must clear all utterances with me before making them?

THISSEN:  Yes, your highness.  Normally calling black conservatives racist names is perfectly acceptable.

LUCKING:  Right.  But not this time.  How about the media?

BAKK:  Only Rupar has written about it so far.

LUCKING:  Who gave him permission?

THISSEN:  Nobody that I know of.  But it’s mostly been damage control so far, so it should be OK.

BAKK:  And Michelle Malkin and Dana Loesch.

LUCKING: Who?

BAKK:  The Filipina Pole-Dancer and some chick who probably boffed Grover Norquist to get a job.

LUCKING:  Ah.

(Through the window, we see Ryan WINKLER walking toward the door.  He’s singing Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back”).

LUCKING:  Let’s get his explanation.

(WINKLER walks into room, salutes LUCKING – who doesn’t return salute. He awkwardly releases salute…)

WINKLER:  Your highness?

LUCKING:  Explain yourself.   You tweeted this yesterday:

WINKLER:  Well, in my defense, I didn’t know “Uncle Tom” was racist.

BAKK:  What?  It’s up there with the “N”-bomb! A white guy using a term to refer to a black guy as a cringing, servile piece of chattel?

WINKLER:  Well, there’s some debate about that.

BAKK:  Not in like 150 years.

WINKLER:  Well, my bad.  And since when is it bad to bag on oreos who vote Republican?

LUCKING:  That’s immaterial.  What the hell else have you been writing? (Takes out pearl-encrusted iPhone, starts flipping through WINKLER’s twitter account) Oh, what the hell…:

And if Virginia wants a battle flag back from their war to defend slavery, they can march to Minnesota and take it.

— Ryan Winkler (@RepRyanWinkler) June 25, 2013

WINKLER: What?

LUCKING: The Civil War’s been over for nearly fifty years.

THISSEN:  At least!  And the ACLU won!

LUCKING:  Look – give me your Blackberry.  I need to see what else you’ve got in your Drafts.  (WINKLER hands over phone).

LUCKING (Flips through phone):  Wait – calling Representative Hillstrom “Screechy McMenstrual?”

WINKLER:  Is that bad?

LUCKING:  Yes!

WINKLER: But she was derailing Representative Martens’ gun bill!

LUCKING:  Thanks be to Alida that never went out.

THISSEN (quietly):  Still, you save that sort of thing for Republican lawmakers.  Like Tara Mack or Mary Franson.

WINKLER:  Ah.  Point taken.

LUCKING:  Didn’t you learn anything at Harvard Law School?   I mean, the school that great minds like Laurence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz teach at?

WINKLER:  Dershowitz?  Ah!  Good ol’ Schlomo the Money-Grubbing Skinflint!

(LUCKING, BAKK and THISSEN glare at WINKLER)

WINKLER:  What?   Wait – that, too?  You gotta be kidding…

(And SCENE)

…what would happen if a Republican tweeted this:

It’s Ryan Winkler, the Eddie Haskell of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

And if he were a Republican, you can be sure that the Strib, the City Pages and the rest of the Twin Cities media would be giving him a rhetorical proctological exam.

UPDATE:  Mirabile Dictu, Rupar did write about it.

Winkler twote Rupar:

@atrupar I did not understand “Uncle Tom” as a racist term, and there seems to be some debate about it. I do apologize for it, however.

— Ryan Winkler (@RepRyanWinkler) June 25, 2013

He didn’t understand it was a racist term?

I’ll just let that one sit there on its own.

Depending on who you believe, the DFL apparently traded away a minimum wage bill for money to restore the building they see as their clubhouse the State Capitol.

I stress the “depending on who you believe” bit, since I’m not entirely sure they even know themselves.

Or maybe it’s just me.  Anyway – I read the story in the Joyce-Foundation-supported © MinnPost, and it seems a little confusing.

The piece, by James Nord, starts out by noting (I’ll add emphasis) that…:

DFL Rep. Ryan Winkler and two Republican legislators who declined to speak on the record say Senate leaders came to a deal that secured a bonding bill for Capitol repairs and ensured an orderly end to the session in exchange for no action on those two policy provisions.

Winkler, the chief House sponsor of the minimum wage legislation, said Republican lawmakers told him of the deal. He described his understanding of it to the Star Tribune just after the session ended May 20.

No, you need not link to the Strib; I’ve done it for you. Here’s Winkler’s quote:

 Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley said leaders in his own party ditched a proposed minimum wage increase to accomplish other priorities.

“Senator Bakk agreed with the Senate Republicans not to pass a minimum wage bill and not to pass the bullying bill, in order for them to agree to support a bonding bill to restore the State Capitol building,” said Winkler, who heard the same story of the deal from House Republicans.

But – back to the Joyce-Foundation-supported © MinnPost, now – later in the Nord piece, Winkler says:

Winkler told MinnPost that he was standing next to House Speaker Paul Thissen at the speaker’s rostrum when Minority Leader Kurt Daudt told Winkler about the agreement…Thissen said in an interview that he had heard about a supposed deal but didn’t have any specific knowledge of it. He hadn’t discussed the issue with Bakk or Hann.

When asked about the diverging stories, Winkler responded, “Well, that may not have been a deal, but all the Republicans believe it was a deal. One way or another, somebody’s misinformed.”

This past session was replete with stories of how the various factions in the DFL were disjointed, how the left hand didn’t know what the farther-left hand was doing.    Especially amusing were the stories about how very, very badly Paul Thissen and Tom Bakk hate each other, and what a hard time they had working together.

But a legislator appearing to disagree with himself?  That’s a new one even for me.

SCENE: at the Twin Cities Liberal Blogger Collective, located in a secret chamber below the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.

Liberal bloggers Cat SCAT, Derek ROSTON, Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN, GUTTERBALL Gary, and Senior Blogger Randy POSTAL are plotting out their next days coverage, along with cartoonist Kevin LIVERWURST.

POSTAL:  All right.  Let’s start working on today’s coverage.  What’s first?

TORSTENGAARDSEN:   Republicans are complaining about the Dayton tax plan.  My headline is “Republicans complain about Dayton tax plan”.

ROSTON: I’d go with “Republicans:  Tax Plan Is So Unfair!”

POSTAL:  Hm.  Doesn’t exactly zing.  New headline…I got it!  “Republicans Pee Pants Over Tax Fairness!”

(Rest of bloggers chortles with glee as TORSTENGAARDSEN types).

SCAT: How about Glen Gruenhagen’s remarks about gays?

(The rest of the bloggers “hiss”).

SCENE:  Adriana and Michael GONZALES, age 30 and 32, owners of a small family commercial cleaning business and parents of three children, are walking through the woods near Minnehaha Park.  It’s foggy and foreboding.

ADRIANA: Mike, did you see something in the woods?

MICHAEL:  Yeah.  Looks like – guys in helmets?

ADRIANA:  This is weird.

MICHAEL:  No kidding…

(They stop, noticing three people in medieval knight costumes – Tom BAKK, Ryan WINKLER and Heather MARTENS – astride the path).

MICHAEL:  Er, who are you?

BAKK:  We are the Knights Who Say “Living Wage!”

WINKER:  We are three elected representatives…

(BAKK nudges WINKLER, points toward Martens, who is gazing distractedly at a squirrel. WINKLER shrugs)

WINKLER: …who roam the forest spreading social justice!

(MICHAEL and ADRIANA shrug)

WINKLER:  If you wish to pass through this forest, you must appease us!

ADRIANA:  Er…OK?  With what?

WINKLER:  You must hire…a Minimum Wage Employee!

MICHAEL:  Cool.  I was hoping to do that.  We’ve got more business than the two of us can handle.

BAKK: Silence?

MICHAEL: Huh?

WINKLER:  You must pay them…nine dollars per hour!

ADRIANA:  Oh, no.  We just need people to do basic cleaning.  We can pay a bonus, but it’s not worth $9 an hour…

BAKK:  And you may not cut your other employees’ hours or benefits to pay the training wage rate, which is itself higher than the federal minimum wage!

WINKLER:  Or lay them off!

BAKK and MARTENS: Or lay them off!

ADRIANA:  Well, then we just can’t hire anyone!

BAKK:  Be happy to pay for a Better Minnesota!

ADRIANA (to MARTENS): So what are you doing here?

MARTENS:  Guns on a bed of escarole make a wonderful snack.  So much better than killing people!

(Sounds in distance:  Minstrels playing over the clip clop of horses, as Governor DAYTON, riding a white charger, appears at the head of a retinue of knights and minstrels.

MINSTREL (as lutes and flutes play in the background) Brave Sir Mark ran away / bravely ran away away! / When terror made its presence known, he bravely turned and scampered home…

DAYTON: Blargle not blargle sure blargle not blargle blargle!

MICHAEL to ADRIANA (whispers): This is a weird place…

MINSTREL: He wasn’t afraid to face Roger Goodell / or tell Alida she’s not so swell / brave brave brave brave sir Mark…

DAYTON:  Blargle!  Blargle not blarg!

MICHAEL : So what if I can’t afford it?

WINKLER:  It’s against the law!  Don’t ask questions!

ADRIANA:  We could just take our business to North Dakota!

BAKK:  Hah!  And for what?  Money?

DAYTON: Blargle!

MICHAEL:  Well…yeah!

WINKLER:  But you can’t get MPR in North Dakota!

ADRIANA:  Yes, I can – we paid for that, too.

BAKK:  But in Minnesota, you will soon have unionized daycare!

ADRIANA:  I like the daycare we have just fine.

WINKLER:  But you can pay more for them!

MARTENS:  It’s a known fact that daycare that costs more is better for children.  Especially if you ban guns.

MICHAEL:  What the…?

DAYTON: Blargle blargle!

ADRIANA (pulling a Texas brochure from her purse and looking at MICHAEL):  This is a silly place.

The couple walk past the jabbering knights.

And SCENE.

Conservatives joke that liberals just. Don’t.  Get. Economics.

We joke, at times, that at some point a liberal is going to push for a “living wage” statute calling for a $100/hour minimum wage as a means to end poverty, followed by a bill barring any layoffs and banning bankruptcy.

It’s a joke.  Some liberals shake their heads and go “yeah, yeah, we’re not nuts”.

And then something comes a long to prove that they really, really are that dissociative.

Rep. Ryan Winkler (D St. Louis Park), also known as “The Eddie Haskell of the House” – is introducing a “Kill All” amendment to House File 92 that bars businesses from laying off workers, cutting hours or benefits due to minimum wage increases. 

I’m going to write that again, just to let it sink in.

Winkler’s bill would make it illegal for businesses to lay off workers, cut hours or benefits due to minimum wage increases.

No, I’m really not making it up; I’ve added emphasis to the original:

(c) Notwithstanding paragraph (b), during the first 90 consecutive days of employment, an employer may pay an employee under the age of 20 years a wage of :

(1) $6.07 per hour beginning August 1, 2013;

(2) $7.24 per hour beginning August 1, 2014;

(3) $8.41 per hour beginning August 1, 2015; and

(4) the rate established under paragraph (d) beginning January 1, 2016.

2.11 No employer may take any action to displace an employee, including a partial  displacement through a reduction in hours, wages, or employment benefits, in order to hire an employee at the wage authorized in this paragraph.

(UPDATE: Commenter Master Of None points out, the above section refers to a training wage – a wage that employers may pay for up to 90 days – and says it’s not quite as dire as I’d made it out to be.   I disagree; Winkler’s bill raises the already existing training wage, causing all the same problems that raising the minimum itself does, which negates most of the utility of a “training wage”, as well as starting some sort of enforcement mechanism to painstakingly adjudicate all disputes related to training and minimum wages.  Because Minnesota businesses needed more niggling regulations)

And as the Obama Administration launches into permanent quantitative easing, Winkler wants to key the minimum wage to inflation, ensuring that no wages will ever keep up with inflation:

2.14 (d) No later than November 1 of each year, beginning in 2015, the commissioner  shall determine the percentage increase in the rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers, United States city average, as determined by the United States Department of Labor, during the most recent 12-month period for  which data is available. The minimum wage rates in paragraphs (b) and (c) are increased by the percentage calculated by the commissioner, rounded to the nearest cent. The new minimum wage rates determined under this paragraph take effect on the next January 1

In other words: Ryan Winkler wants to…:

• arbitrariliy set wages (higher than the federal minimum, no less!)
• bar business from compensating for the arbitrary change in labor costs in any way but by increasing revenues in the middle of a crap economy (which Dayton’s business service taxes and Obamacare are making worse by the day).

It’s the sort of thing any Economics 101 student knows is madness if he or she wants to get better than a “C”.

Bonus Question:  Do you think Rachel Stassen-Berger, Tom Scheck, Tim Pugmire or John Cronyn will bring any of this up with Winkler or the leadership that enables him?

Over the years on this blog, I’ve made certain observations about human behavior as manifested through online media, like blogs and Twitter.

I’ve captured and codifed some of these observations as “Berg’s Law“, a series of common observations that I’m pretty sure are universal.

One of the most commonly-invoked Laws is “Berg’s Seventh Law”, which states “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.

I’ve rung up quite a number of occurrences of Berg’s 7th over the years. And I’ve found another.

Big-time.

(more…)

After a couple of terms of “serving” as the Eddie Haskell of the MInnesota House, Rep. Ryan Winkler finally has to start earning what passes, in DFL legislative circles, for “his keep”.

His first assignment in the majority?  Get Minnesotans working!

House Speaker-Designate Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, said in a news release today that Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, will chair the Speaker’s Select Committee on Living Wage Jobs. Thissen said the group of DFL and Republican lawmakers will research, investigate, report and propose legislation to address the decline of living wage jobs, and look for ways to grow the economy and strengthen the middle class.

So let’s do our bit for government efficiency.  Let’s write Winkler’s report for him.

What kind of a report do you think Winkler – a guy whose “day job” is working for Ted Mondale, the heir apparent to the Mondale secular “The State Is My Mother” church – is going to write?  What kind of legislation will he propose?

Put your thoughts in the comment section.

Over at MPR, Tom Scheck brings us the latest DFL chanting point; the “links” between two GOP legislators (Rep. Gottwalt and Sen. Hann) who pushed a healthcare privatization bill in the last session, and the insurance industry.

 State Rep. Steve Gottwalt, R-St. Cloud, led the GOP effort to cut spending in the state’s Health and Human Services budget when the Republicans controlled the Legislature. Now, both he and his Senate counterpart [Hann] have business links to the insurance industry, which has some other lawmakers asking whether the arrangement violates ethics rules.

This is a chanting point that the DFL’s been working up for a while here.  The DFL’s beef is that…

…some Democratic lawmakers are raising questions about the arrangement.

“I can see why the owner of the business was pushing for the bill. It’s more business for him,” said Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville. “The fact that [Gottwalt] is now working for him, I’m disappointed in that.”

Health insurance brokers backed the legislation, championed by Gotttwalt’s counterpart in the other chamber, state Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie.

The incoming chairman of the House ethics committee, Rep. Tom Huntley, DFL-Duluth, said: “If these are payoffs, then the ethics committee needs to look at it.”

And if there are not payoffs – and there aren’t – then will Huntley, Marty, and the idiot leftyblogger chanting point bots apologize to Hann and Gottwalt?

Read Scheck’s piece for the details.

But I have a few questions, here:

Who else are you going to have working on healthcare finance policy? A bunch of lawyers and social workers?  Who knows the financial side of the healthcare industry better than people who, y’know, work on the financial side of the healthcare industry?

Aren’t we cherrypicking the outrage we choose to feed to the media, DFL?  Shouldn’t we bar teachers from committees on education appropriations?  .  Union activists oughtta be at least recusing themselves from votes on Right to Work and unionizing daycare and personal care workers!   Do we want lawyers writing laws?  And don’t be trying to hide, there, Erin Murphy; I’m told you were the executive director of a nursing lobby group, and became the ranking DFLer on the Healthcare Committee.  Or Ryan Winkler, who is employed (heh) at Ted Mondale’s government-data-mining software company, sounding off about legislation that’d involve another data-mining company?

Of course, the DFL finds these kinds of non-corrupt “corruption” all the time, while practicing it themselves.

If only we had some institution – maybe with printing presses and transmitters, and people whose job it was to run down little facts like this?  Perhaps those people working for that institution could think of themselves as a holy, truth-seeking monastic order?  Call themselves “high priests of gatekeeping”, perhaps?

Just a thought.

By the way – lost in the contrived, DFL-agenda-driven “hubbub”:  the program that Gottwalt and Hann developed has been a huge improvement for the Minnesotans it was intended to serve.  “Healthy Minnesota” gives its participants vouchers enabling them to buy a standard insurance plan on the open market; it’s cheaper than UCare, and the participants get better, more personally-focused coverage than provided by the state. There are gaps – every insurance plan has ’em – but it was, as advertised, a huge improvement over UCare at lower cost.

In other words, it’s a government program that does what it’s supposed to do, and saves money to boot.

But “big business” is invovled, and that thought apparently gives DFLers explosive diarrhea.

While the “Left MN” blog seems to be a re-boot of the late, demented but unlamented “Cucking Stool”, the site’s associate blogger Tony Petrangelo is one of those rare Minnesota leftybloggers who ought not be under police surveillance – a compliment I give rarely (becaiuse it’s rarely deserved).  Over the years, he’s written some excellent stuff about polling, redistricting, and the mechanics of politics.

And this past week, he’s been releasing a set of predictions for the MN House and Senate.  He’s done this before, by the way:

This is my second time doing race ratings of Minnesota legislative elections, the first time being in 2010. Here are links to my Senate ratings and House ratings from that cycle. I used a Safe/Tilt/Toss-up ratings scale and prior to the election I rated the Senate seats as 31 total DFL seats (Safe+Tilt), 19 total GOP seats and 17 Toss-ups.

The GOP won all 19 seats I had them winning. They also won every single race I had listed as a toss-up. They also won a race I had listed as Tilt DFL, the Don Betzold – Pam Wolf race. Clearly 2010 was a wave year for the GOP.

Still, as Petrangelo notes, it was a game effort:

That said, I don’t think my ratings did particularly bad especially since there was no sort of adjustment incorporated to account for the broader political context of the election.

We’ll come back to that.

As with my previous foray into race ratings I’ve kept this years version to an entirely numbers based exercise. Meaning at no point is a race rating the way it is because I made a subjective judgement about the quality of a candidate.

There’s some more methodology talk in there, which you should oughtta read, because it’s useful stuff and I don’t disagree with any of it.

Which is notable, in that my own ratings below are largely the opposite.

Well, not entirely; in many, maybe most cases, I agree with Petrangelo.  In many others, I made a different prediction because of some qualitative aspect to the race that isn’t readily apparent in the empirical numbers Petrangelo used.  A race held after a redistricting is going to toss a lot of those empirical measures up in the air – as will a wave election (as Petrangelo discovered in 2010).  While this may not be a wave year, there’s a dynamic at work that I think will affect a lot of these races.

I’ll do the House of Representatives first.  I’ll include the House District, the DFLer, the GOPer, Petrangelo’s rating, and mine; if mine differ from Petrangelo’s they’ll be in bold.

Senate tomorrow!

How do you measure success in a politician?

If you’re a liberal, it’s likely in terms of sheer volume of legislation created and money moved about.  Because to a liberal, government is about creating reams of paper, rules, laws, stuff for government to do.

If you’re a conservative, it’s probably more a matter of princple; of getting government out of the way, of taking pointless laws and needless regulations off the books.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Mike McFeely is a talk show host in Fargo.  He’s the current house liberal at KFGO, which was at one time the WCCO of the Fargo area, and like WCCO has shrunk greatly since its heyday (and since I left North Dakota).  He fills the role Fast Eddie Schultz used to play on the station, the token lefty.  Like Schultz, he’s apparently a former small-market sportscaster; like Schultz, he sounds like it.

And like a lot of liberal D-list pundits and pseudo-celebs, he’s got a jones for Mary Franson, GOP incumbent in District 8B and, like most uppity female and minority conservatives, the same sort of catnip for lefties that Michele Bachmann has been for the past decade and a half.  It started  a few weeks ago, with McFeely’s Schultz-like chanting of rumors that even some of the smarter regional leftyblogs long ago debunked.  McFeely came across in that case as a small-town crone abusing the “power” of his radio bully pulpit (and as much as KFGO has atrophied, it’s still not chicken feed)

I’ll give the guy kudos for at least trying to go legit in this letter to the editor in the East Otter Tail County Focus last week.

Rep. Mary Franson does not represent Greater Minnesota values and, by her own admission, will not have a strong voice for her constituents in House District 8B if she is re-elected.

Now, whenever a critic says their target has said something “by their own admission”, you can usually be pretty sure someone’s trying to play a rhetorical card trick; they admitted nothing of the sort.

While Rep. Franson has made embarrassing headlines nationally and statewide for, among other things, comparing her constituents who receive food assistance to wild animals (a claim she repeated even after “apologizing” for it on social media)

Now, when you’re a sportscaster, you can pretty much babble any kind of crap you want – because it’s just sports.  McFeely – like Schultz before him – seems to think politics is about the same.

But no – the smart people dispensed with that meme, too, and months ago; Franson pointed out, correctly, that long-term dependence dehumanizes people, and casts government in the role of the benevolent, responsible pet owner.   The remarks were taken out of context during a fractious session by a DFL noise machine that exists only to provide grist for their campaign mill.

And like a lot of D-list talk show hosts – and yes, my NARN pals and I are better than this – McFeely and “context” are never really on good terms:

At the event during which she repeated her comparison of assistance recipients to wild animals, Rep. Franson admitted that members of her own party did not support her and distanced themselves from her.

Yep.  During the “Animals” fracas, the House leadership shamefully backed away from Franson – one of several “ready fire aim” moments in a trying session for GOPers.

But teapot-tempests come and go; at the end of the day, always, “it’s the economy, stupid”.  McFeely takes a brisk dip into actual fact:

Despite low unemployment in Douglas and Todd counties

Wait – back up.  This Republican corner of the state is doing pretty well, you say?

Huh.

So let’s take a quick breather and set up some actual, factual history:  Representative Franson was…:

1. …elected in the Tea Party wave in 2010 on a conservative ticket…
2. …to represent a traditionally conservative Republican part of the state…
3. …that’s doing relatively well, and apparently – by dint of having sent a conservative freshman legislator to the legislature in the middle of a grueling recession – wants to keep it that way.

Just so we’ve got that straight.

McFeely:

Instead of spending time in St. Paul fighting for issues specific to her constituents – such as lowering property taxes for farms and small businesses in rural Minnesota – Rep. Franson spent her two years in the Legislature authoring bills that accomplished nothing.

Perhaps McFeely would favor us by showing us the bill where Franson raised – or declined to lower – property taxes.

Go ahead, Mike, We’ll wait.  Cough up that bill.

[Mr. McFeely – don’t look at this next statement.  Scout’s honor?  OK – all the rest of you know that property taxes are the role of county commissions and city councils.  The legislature doesn’t set property taxes.  Now, the Democrats have spent the last two years babbling about how lowering Local Government Aid inevitably raises property taxes.  McFeely would have you believe that on Franson’s watch, taxes rose as a direct, cause-and-effect consequence of lowered LGA.  It’s one of those chanting points the left throws out there to gull the ill-informed.  But, again, that’s the job of the counties and cities.  Assuming LGA was cut.  Was it?  We’ll come back to that – but I’ll give you a little spoiler; McFeely makes Ed Schultz look smart and ethical].

Got that bill, Mike?  Hint:  It’s between the snipes and the half-round squares.

———-

Next, McFeely botches history – and by “botch”, let’s be charitable and assume he just doesn’t know the actual facts involved; if he does, then he’s just lying:

In her two years in St. Paul, Rep. Franson authored 36 bills. None became law. Very few were even discussed or forwarded. Even her own party wasn’t interested in the agenda Rep. Franson was trying to push. That is the definition of an ineffective legislator.

Wait – authoring laws that don’t get passed “defines” “ineffective?”

Let’s go back to the beginning of the post; conservatives don’t believe generating new laws defines success.

But let’s go by the left’s – and McFeely’s – definition of “effectiveness”.  None of Franson’s 36 bills passed into law.

Which is exactly the same record as House Minority Leader Paul Thissen; none of the two bills he authored passed into law, either!

Or how about a more rank-and-file member?  Ryan “The Intellectual Id Of The DFL Caucus” Winkler chief-authored 22 bills.  None passed; none even came close.

And do you know what?  Neither Thissen’s 0/2, Winkler’s 0/22 or Fransen’s 0/36 are even below average – because in a typical session (for example, 2008, the latest one with statistics) over 4,000 bills are introduced, and around 100 get signed.  That’s about 1 out of 40.

In other words, McFeely tossed out a number that is in itself meaningless without context.  Just like the “Animals” comment and his “property taxes” comment; either he doesn’t know what he’s taking about and doesn’t care, or he does and he’s hoping nobody checks his facts.  Like all Democrat campaigns, he – and by extension, the Cunniff campaign that McFeely is supporting – is hoping people aren’t curious enough to poke at those numbers.

Oh, we’re not done.

———-

McFeely turns next from misleading context to just-plain-ignorance:

At the same time, Rep. Franson consistently voted to raise taxes on residents of Greater Minnesota. She supported elimination of the Market Value Homestead Credit, raising property taxes on all Minnesotans and particularly those in rural Minnesota.

MVHC was a subsidy of metro-area housing; it kept metro-area property taxes artificially low, and subsidized spending by the wastrel DFL governments in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth.  Like LGA itself, it transferred money from the parts of the state that support themselves to our basket-case metro areas.

But at least that was a chanting point with a coherent argument.  Next, McFeely wafts away into fantasy-land:

Rep. Franson sided with metropolitan legislators by failing to fight for an increase in Local Government Aid, a tool that provides property tax relief primarily for Greater Minnesota cities and towns.

Local Government Aid, as we’ve discussed in the past, was originally a way to transfer money to poor, outstate towns from the wealthy Metro, to allow them to buy some of the amenities of modern life; modern schools, roads, water treatment plants and the like.  It’s turned into a subsidy of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth (although Iron Range towns get the most aid per capita).

(And while McFeely doesn’t name, and I suspect doesn’t know, the “metropolital legislators” with whom he claims Franson sided, it’s worth noting that the Metro is divided between cities that are constantly begging for more aid, and suburbs that largely receive none).

The GOP ran in 2010 on a platform of returning LGA to its original purpose – supporting smaller towns that don’t have the tax base to buy the necessities of modern government. And how’d that work?

State funding for LGA has been cut 25 percent over the last 10 years and has remained flat since 2010.  Eliminating or reducing LGA will seriously weaken regional centers like Alexandria and small cities like New York Mills.

McFeely gives a statewide number – but since McFeely’s writing about Franson’s performance in re her district, 8B, let’s ask what are the district’s specifics?

Let’s track LGA payments in 2008 and 2011 – payments, not pledges – for the three counties in Rep. Franson’s district, as well as the state averages and the metro areas (measured in per-capita dollars actually paid to the various jurisdictions).  All figures come from that noted conservative tool, the State of Minnesota:

Ah.  So that’s why McFeely gave a statewide number!  Because since 2008 – the only period Rep. Franson had any control over as a legislator – LGA actually rose in Otter Tail and Todd counties; it shrank by an insignificant amount in Douglas County, where Alexandria is. and where as McFeely himself admitted, the economy is doing better than the state average.

So if you’re a liberal?  District 8B’s LGA was steady to slightly up.  More money!  Franson was effective!

And if you’re a conservative?  LGA spending in the district was in line with the GOP’s platform, raising payments to smaller out-of-state jurisdictions that actually need it, and were the original intended target of this spending.  Franson was still effective!

And if you have a functioning BS detector?  Mike McFeely is out of his depth writing about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball, and is serving as a trained chimp reciting DFL chanting points he may not understand, and certainly hopes you, the voter in District 8B, won’t.

Like the following:

Under her watch, property taxes have risen sharply…

Although, as the state’s figures show, not because of anything the legislature did, least of all in District 8B.

…while she has embarrassed her constituents with controversial national headlines.

Which were cowardly manglings of context by people who are getting more and more desperate at their prospects in two weeks, and for whom female conservatives are like red capes in front of bulls.

Franson did get an 86 from the Taxpayers League, among many other spiffs from conservative groups.  She was one of the freshmen “Tea Party” class that held the line on things like spending, tax hikes, and giving money to Zygi Wilf, while erasing the deficit, reforming regulations, keeping Minnesota’s unemployment rate way below the national average, and working to reform our state’s business climate.

In short, she did what the majority of (pre-redistricting) District 11B’s voters – mostly Republican, mostly conservative – sent her to do.

And if this is how desperate her opponent, Bob Cunniff, and his campaign are getting, it looks like she’ll do the same for new district 8B.

And if you live in the area, feel free to let the East Otter Tail Focus – and Mike McFeely – know I said so.

———-

So we started the article by asking how you measure a politician.  The answer – whether you’re left or right – most likely involves doing what one is sent to the Capitol to do.  Has Mary Franson done this?  That’s for the people in her district – not talking heads from Fargo or the Twin Cities – to decide.

So how about a media figure, an uninvited pundit?

Getting one’s facts straight, or at least being honest, would be a great start.

Via Power Line, I see that the Strib has noted the fact that 100,000 (currently 103,000) Minnesotans have carry permits…

…which was first reported in this space on May 31; well over 1z00,000 Minnesotans currently have active carry permits.

The Strib is finally on the story – and there’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The bad news?  They – in this case. reporter Larry Oakes – still can’t resist a bunch of the usual clichés:

[A carry permittee named Pat Cannon] not a vigilante. He’s not a nut. He’s just another average Minnesotan who has acquired the power to kill.

Why do I suspect the Strib newsroom is the only place, besides a DFL meeting (PTR) that “Vigilante” or “Nut” would have been suggested?   I mean, you get used to it when the MSM talkes about gunnies – this sense that underneath it all it’s just a little “off”.

But here’s the good news – Oakes balances things out relatively fairly:

[Permit training instructor Evam] Easton said the permit holders he knows “are lawyers, real estate agents — especially women who have to show houses alone — landscapers, a video engineer, a network technician, a radio show host [Quite a few of the, actually – Ed.], a couple of legislators, a mediator who talks divorced couples through sticky situations … a lot of typical, average careers.”

And to his credit, Oakes finds a couple of “experts” who are not completely ludicrous on the subject:

“America has long had a gun culture, but now it’s becoming a carry culture,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and author of “Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”

Winkler traces the roots of the shift to fears spawned by the social and political upheaval of the 1960s.

“People began to see the gun as something for personal protection, not just hunting,” Winkler said. Meanwhile, as gun-control advocates pushed to get handguns banned in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, the NRA “changed overnight” in 1977, Winkler said, from stressing support for hunters to focusing like a laser on the right to bear arms.

Those factors helped trigger a handgun rights movement that swept the country, and by 2011, 37 states adopted so-called “shall issue” permit laws, taking away officials’ discretion to deny permits to people who are of legal age, sound mind and have no criminal history.

Not a bad whack at history for an MSM piece, all in all.  And it’s perhaps a sign that the Twin Cities media is growing in office ever so slightly that Andrew Rothman is getting as many calls as some of the more risible antis:

Rothman said it’s no surprise that a greater proportion of permit holders live where the gun culture is generations deep.

“If you grew up in Minneapolis, it’s easy to believe that guns are just plain trouble,” he said. “But you don’t have that out in the country, and the square miles are huge. If you have a dangerous situation, the police can be 30 minutes or an hour away.”

And Oakes does in fact manage to get outside the traditional envelope of media sources:

[A woman], a 40-year-old professional from the Twin Cities, asked that her name be withheld for the same reason she started carrying: A man with a violent history is stalking her.

She got a restraining order, but even the judge who signed it told her it wouldn’t necessarily protect her. So both she and her husband got permits and carry.

“I don’t want to ever have to use it, and I would rather not have the responsibility,” she said.

So so far I have to give kudos to Oakes.

And I can’t fault Oakes for his editorial drive to lend some balance to what has, so far, been a favorable story about Minnesota carry permittees.

But I saw the next section head…:

A mixed record

…and my Martensdar went off.

“Martensdar” is that feeling any Minnesota Second Amendment activist gets when Heather Martens is about to be cited as an expert source in the Twin Cities media (see also: Jacobsdar, Daveschultzdar).

And lemme tell you, my Martensdar is one finely-tuned machine:

The law “has not been a net benefit to our society in any way,” said Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota — Working to End Gun Violence. “They promised that if lots of people had guns everybody would be safe. Here just [recently] we had a 5-year-old child killed while sleeping on a couch. I think we were sold a bill of goods.”

Maybe Oakes is new to the guns beat.  Or maybe – this is actually the most likely – he can’t find another anti-gun “expert” in the Twin Cities.  It’s plausible that Oakes doesn’t know the single fact anyone needs to know about Heather Martens.

So here it is:  If Heather Martens says or writes something about guns, it’s a lie.  

This blog has been documenting Heather Martens’ serial perfidy for almost a decade.  Her “Group” (it’s not a group), “Protect Minnesota”, has just changed its name, because after almost a decade nobody took her seriously under the old name, “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota”.

And she’s in traditional form with the statement above, with two toxic lies in one paragraph:

• Nobody, but nobody, “promised that if lots of people had guns everybody would be safe”.  We showed with a preponderance of evidence that we’d be safer – and we are.  Violent crime is down in Minnesota – especially the parts with the strongest gun culture.
• The five year old was not killed by a carry permittee.  He was killed by a juvenile (you need to be 21 to get a permit, and 18 to buy a gun legally, which I’m pretty certain the gun involved in the murder was not) on a block that was in effect a self-contained criminal enterprise, among a group of a adults among which one might suspect few would qualify for a carry permit (due to criminal records), in a city that was, and remains, hostile to the law-abiding gun owner.

But that’s not all.

There’s some even more misleading information in Martens’ contribution to Oakes’ piece.

More on Thursday.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve analyzed the votes of the Legislative GOP caucuses on the stadium votes over the past few weeks, and found that if you’re a conservative voter, you have some reason to take consolation; the legislators we sent to the Legislature in 2010 on a conservative platform largely – not perfectly, but largely – stuck with their principles.

How about the DFL?

Heres’ the interesting part:  Look at the DFLers in the House and Senate who voted “no” on the Stadium deal.  Don’t worry, it won’t take long; not many DFLers could bear the thought of not giving Wilfare to a billionaire:

• Allen
• Carlson (Lyndon)
• Clark
• Davnie
• Dibble
• Dziedzic
• Eaton
• Falk
• Greene
• Greiling
• Hansen (Rick)
• Hausman
• Hayden
• Hornstein
• Kahn
• Laine
• Lenczewski
• Liebling
• Loeffler
• Lourey
• Marty
• McGuire
• Mullery
• Murphy (Erin)
• Pappas
• Paymar
• Scalze
• Torres Ray
• Wagenius

With the exceptions of Rep. Falk and Senator Lourey, every last one of them is from the metro area.  They represent (or, for some of us, “represent”) the people who will actually be stuck with the lion’s share of the tax burden for all of those purple-clad horn-blowing tail-gating Bud-chugging freeloaders’ “family traditions”.

The rest of them?  From 18-term dinosaur Mary Murphy to first-term carpetbagger Carly Melin, from Eastsider Jon Lesch to suburban grandée Nora Slawik, from Iron Range glad-hander Tom Rukavina to smirky suburban snark-bot and Eddie Haskell impersonator Ryan Winkler, they’re the ones who figured billionaire Zygi Wilf deserves your money more than you and your family do.

Here they are:  Anzelc,Atkins, Bakk, Benson (John), Bonoff, Brynaert, Champion, Cohen, Dill, Dittrich, Eken, Fritz, Gauthier, Goodwin , Harrigton, Higgins , Hilstrom, Hilty, Hortmann, Hosch, Huntley, Johnson (Sheldon), Kath, Kelash, Knuth, Koenen, Langseth, Latz, Lesch, Lillie (Leon), Mahoney, Mariani, Marquart, Melin, Metzen, Moran, Morrow, Murphy (Mary), Nelson (Michael), Norton, Pelowski, Persell, Poppe, Reinert, Rest, Rukavina, Saxhaug, Sheran, Sieben, Simon (Steve), Skoe, Slawik, Slocum, Sparks, Stumpf, Thissen, Tillberry, Tomassoni, Ward, Winkler and Wiger.

They’re the ones that practice Cy Thao’s classic if inadvertent dictum of “progressive” politics – “when we win, we take your money; when you win, you get to keep your money”. And Larry Pogemiller’s even better “it’s silly to think that the people can spend their own money better than the government can”.

Does the GOP need to get more conservative?  Do its less conservative members need to shape up or get out?  Absolutely.  And hopefully we’re not done with that process this election season.

But let’s not forget who invented “overtaxation” and “subsidizing the 1%” in this state.

Tomorrow – what the MNGOP needs to do.  Says me.

…a letter like this’d be popping up any moment now.

———-

To: Minnesota GOP Legislative Caucus
From: Governor Dayton / the DFL Legislative Caucus
Re: Thanks

Our GOP Colleagues,

I know, I know – we call you all sorts of names, we lie about you and your proposals in the press, and we make you endure Ryan “The Pauly Shore of the House” Winkler.  Most of all, we want to spend, spend, spend.  You’re right. It’s a fair cop.

But we gotta give credit where credit is due.   Holding the line on taxes and working to roll back regulations has put the state on a much better fiscal footing than it might have been.  And holding the line on spending, keeping it within the recession-addled revenues we had two years ago, like you did in the 2011 session?

I know, I know – we fought you tooth and nail, and said you hated the children and bla bla bla.   But yep, not only did the February forecast show a surplus, but  revenues are coming in even faster than the forecast thought it would.

So kudos to you, GOP.

Now – could you cut us a break on that whole “paying back the school funding shift” bit?  The treasury’s full of MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY…

…sorry.  I got a little carried away.  Anyway, we’d like to make sure we have single-payer healthcare for pets.  And build a light-rail line from Uptown Minneapolis to Northeast Minneapolis.  And build MPR a new studio, in case their old studio breaks.

Do it for the children.

Sincerely,

The Entire Minnesota DFL

Gary from Highland Park directed me to a quote in this piece about a bill that would make concert and sporting event tickets the personal property of the purchaser:

“I don’t see your bill as a free-market bill,” said Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley. “[It’s] the Legislature weighing in and picking winners and losers among competing industries, and that’s something we’re pretty bad at, but never can stop doing, it seems.”

Gary adds “”Isn’t the first step admitting you have a problem? Think he can stop his destructive habit?”

I’m just wondering why Winker’s wasting his time on this, and not out there personally creating more jerbs?

In every engineering company in America, stuck on a bulletin board or taped to someone’s cube, is this cartoon:

Everyone who’s worked in engineering or any kind of analysis has seen this sort of reasoning on projects; you start with parameters, end with a conclusion – and the details will get filled in later, once the stakeholders conquer than whole “Miraculous” thing.

It totally applies today.

——–

The Governor announced his new stadium plan today.

And if you, like me, have been adamant about not spending any public money on enriching Zygi Wilf – well, it’s mostly bad:

The officials were quick to announce the plan does not include any new taxes and includes a hefty contribution from the team.

Dayton said Rosen described the package as “the best deal available that’s possible.”

Dayton said the Legislature and the city must decide whether the state wants to be involved with professional football.

“I believe it does,” Dayton said.

Dayton said he will communicate with the Minneapolis City Council about the package shortly.

Under the “term sheet” announced today, the costs are divided 56 percent public, 44 percent private to put the facility up.

The problem?

For starters, as Gary Gross has been reporting for some weeks now, the public portion of the plan not only relies heavily on electronic gambling proceeds.  The plan presumes that revenue from these sources is going to boom – but it’s been drastically down in the past decade, over 20%.  The plan is to take all the new revenue and hand it over to the Vikes.

And that’s just on the state side.  The other public pillar of the plan involves the City of Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak explained the sales tax structure and urged approval of the package.

But Doug Belden and Dennis Lien didn’t explain it.  It involves diverting the city’s convention center tax – and the City Council has already said no, no, a thousand times no, well, a thousand times.  Rybak is talking, as they say in Latin, de anus.

(Which may be one of very few cases where phrasing something in Latin is actually more gauche than the Englsh original, “out his butt”).

And like the cartoon above, this deal requires several miracles to occur.

The Minneapolis City Council needs a 180 degree change of heart on the “sales tax structure” that Mayor Rybak glossed over.

The charitable gambling market needs to counter its recent history, and not only expand, but hit a major boom.

And, by the bye, the Tribes need to not send squadrons of DFL assassin ninjas out to exact revenge for further eroding their monopoly on gaming in the state.  Which you know, if you follow the interactions between the tribes and the government at all, is about as likely as Ryan Winkler winning an arm-wrestling match with Jared Allen.

This “Deal” is no deal. It is vapor.  It counts on a miracle occurring.

And the City of Minneapolis, the Tribes, and the laws of economics have all outlawed miracles.

UPDATE:  A Capitol Hill wag wrote me: “it would be interesting to track the history of revenue projections from electronic pull tabs. seems rather variable, as in it seems to grow to fit whatever dayton wants to use it for. funny that estimates for gop initiatives never do that.”

I’m sure MPR’s “Poligraph” will get right on that.