Durable goods orders off over 7% in July. 

Look for people who make durable goods to start laying more people off.

More time for them to enjoy all the hope and change.

Here’s my favorite:

In today’s American culture, if you aren’t being constantly validated, you’re being persecuted.

It’s among the conclusions of Nancy French’s piece reviewing the Time article about the growing wave of “child-free” people  – who, finding that our society values children, are finding themselves less-validated and, ergo, persecuted. 

(“Child-Free” is as opposed to “Childless”; childless means “can’t have kids, or just haven’t found the right person, time and situation to try”, while “child-free” means “choose to avoid having your life center around something other than yourself…”

Oops.  Now I’m persecuting.

It was twenty years ago this month that one of the most seminal essays in the history of the broad “Liberty” movement in American politics was published.

The essay was “A Nation Of Cowards”, by Jeffrey Snyder, in the fall edition of “The Public Interest”. And in those days just before the commercial dawn of the Worldwide Web, it was a sensation among people who supported the human rights enshrined in the Second Amendment.

Twenty years ago, I was pretty downcast about the future of the Second Amendment. Things did, indeed, look fairly dire. The nation had been through 25 years of nonstop anti-gun propaganda. Guns were banned outright, or subjected to extensive niggling regulations that made them effectively illegal for private citizens, in much of the country. Carry permits in most of the US were to some degree unattainable, the province of of the well-connected and the official.

And beyond that? The idea of “liberty” in conservative politics seemed to be ever less in fashion.

And then came “A Nation Of Cowards” – a fiercely intellectual demolition of the anti-gun-control arguments that did for the moral case against victim disarmament what Sanford Levinson’s “A Nation Of Cowards” did for the legal case; set the standard, and galvanized a decade and a half of activism that turned the battle around.

And today, we need the article more than ever.

And so I’ll reprint it in its entirety below. If you’re a lawyer for any publication involved, sure, whatever, send me a cease and desist, and I’ll take it down.

But until then, read it.

Read the rest of this entry »

An alum’s observations on homecoming week at Macalester College in Saint Paul – which, if you’re not from the area, is sort of like Oberlin or Bard or any of a slew of other relentlessly lefty four-year colleges.

President Obama went on the air to say that if he had a father who was in his late eighties and fought on Okinawa, he’d look a lot like Delbert Belton.

Well, no.  He didn’t. 

The beating death of Belton last week was a huge story in the media all last week.

Well, no. It wasn’t.    Outside the conservative alt-media, the story – like the previous weeks’ death of Christopher Lane – was all but embargoed. 

Described as “the kind of nice old man who’d become your friend in minutes,” World War II veteran Delbert “Shorty” Belton was assaulted by two teens in the parking lot of the Eagles Lodge in Spokane, Washington, at around 8 p.m. on Wednesday. He died in the hospital Thursday morning.

Belton’s death has already gone viral, and is uncovering deep racial divides, simmering anger and disgust with the media. Most pointedly, many are asking: Why has the death of Belton — and similarly the death of Australian college student Christopher Lane in Oklahoma — largely been ignored by a media which was, only a couple of weeks ago, absolutely obsessed with the Trayvon Martin/ George Zimmerman case. Both the Belton and Lane case feature victims who died in race-related attacks. The only difference between the Belton and Lane cases compared to the Martin case is that they feature white victims and black assaulters. 

Not to mention serious allegations of explicit racial motivation that were never part of the Martin/Zimmerman case – at least the one that went to the jury, as opposed to the media narrative. 

The problem, of course, is that this nation’s “conversation about race” is a monologue.

We warned the DFL.  “Go ahead – raise cigarette taxes – the most regressive tax there is.  Watch what happens.  People will go out of their way to avoid paying the tax.  Just you watch!”

And the DFLers – and their camp followers in the local Sorosphere – assured the,selves “Naw!   People won’t drive miles out of their way for…cigarettes.  No way. It people aren’t that manic about not paying for A Better Minnesota”

But at a price break of almost two bucks a pack? <A href=”http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2013/aug/19/cigarette-buyers-flee-minnesota-to-avoid-tax-hike/”>Of course they are</a>.

The Northern Alliance Radio Network is back at the Minnesota State Fair!

Brad Carlson and I will be broadcasting from our booth on Machinery Hill – on Underwood, just south of Murphy, right next to the Home Depot pavilion:

View Larger Map

Brad and I will be teaming up for today’s show; we’ll be talking with…:

• Princess Kay of the Milky Way!
• Senator Roger Chamberlain
• House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt
• Senate candidate Mike McFadden

Tune in from 4-6PM, or listen on IHeartRadio or at the AM1280 website!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Obama Administration has a 69-point plan how the federal government can better respond to hurricanes in a time of global warming. The underlying premise is the federal government should do anything. The premise is wrong, it should do nothing

First, there is no Constitutional authority to spend money to rebuild people’s houses after natural disasters. Second, there is a perfectly viable alternative way to achieve the objective of not having to endlessly rebuild coastal areas.

If you built in a flood zone and get flooded, no federal money to rebuild. And if you do rebuilt, you must build on stilts, which is so expensive nobody will do it and without government guarantees, they couldn’t get property insurance anyway. Those who can afford to build will self-insure. Attrition will solve the problem of damaged buildings and the abandoned ground eventually will revert to coastal wetland barriers, at no federal cost at all.

Sometimes the right answer really is: do nothing.

Joe Doakes

But “doing nothing”, even when it’s the right thing (not) to do, creates no government union jobs.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – at least in the world of Twin Cities talk radio. 

That’s right – the Northern Alliance Radio Network is back at the Minnesota State Fair!

Brad Carlson and I will be broadcasting from our booth on Machinery Hill – on Underwood, just south of Murphy, right next to the Home Depot pavilion:

View Larger Map

 Brad is live on the air from 4-6PM today.  His guest line-up starts with former Miss Minnesota Siri Freeh and Senator Dave Hann – and if that’s just the opening act, you can imagine where it goes from there!

Tune in, or run over to Brad’s blog to find out more!

I feel like smacking an MSNBC host like a piñata.  A Piñata full of crap. 

In this case, it’s MSNBC contrib Joy Reid, who said on the air:

“There’s this sort of neo-Confederate thread that runs through this pro-gun movement and NRA movement,” she said this afternoon while discussing the recall elections for Democratic state lawmakers in Colorado that were spurred by their support for gun-control legislation.

Confederate Soldiers! This photo (courtest of the Joyce Foundation-supported MinnPost – is what the Big Left thinks you, the law-abiding gun owner, are. Hey, it was in the MinnPost – and they’re Real, Badge-Carrying Journalists!

 

 Reid also argued that gun-rights advocates and the National Rifle Association are hypocrites because they oppose the new restrictions on gun rights signed into law by Colorado governor John Hickenlooper while advocating for states’ rights and the Tenth Amendment.

Perhaps someone could explain to the ingenious Ms. Reid that it was Coloradans that are voting on the pushback against Hickenlooper are, well, from Colorado.  The NRA is a private organization; the Tenth Amendment doesn’t regulate its activities. 

But it’s great to see an MSNBC drone invoke the Tenth Amendment!

“The NRA will come in, helicopter in and undo [those laws],” she said.

If the NRA had the power to make and unmake the law, this might be a better nation. 

But it’s not actually the case.

Half of the Minnesota “Patch” “hyperlocal news” sites are going to be closing or consolidating in the next few months:

Kevira Voegele, associate regional editor for Minnesota, emailed staffers over the weekend to inform them that 13 of the state’s 25 Patches would need to land a partner — a media organization that would assume some responsibility for their operations — or face closure within 60 days.

It’s a nationwide problem for AOL-owned Patch, which is closing or consolidating 300 of its 900 local websites coast to coast. 

In Minnesota, the Patches slated for closure or consolidation failing a partnership are Apple Valley-Rosemount, Burnsville, Eden Prairie, Fridley, Golden Valley, Hopkins, Inver Grove Heights, Lake Minnetonka, Mendota Heights, Plymouth, Roseville, Shakopee and Southwest Minneapolis.

Sites that will continue to operate as usual include Eagan, Edina, Lakeville, Maple Grove, Minnetonka, Northfield, Oakdale, Richfield, Stillwater, St. Louis Park, St. Michael and Woodbury.

In my experience, the Patch chain – at least in Minnesota – was just as sclerotic and left-biased as of the local newspapers that they couldn’t quite replace.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A man was beating his girlfriend with a metal rod outside their Florida apartment. A neighbor saw it and spoke up. The man then attacked the neighbor. She shot him. He died. No charges were filed. Police said she had the right to defend the domestic abuse victim (Defense of Others) and also the right to Stand Her Ground to defend herself. Result: abuser dead, girl friend recovering, neighbor free to go.

That result could not happen here.

Minnesota is a Duty To Retreat state. Girlfriend had a Duty to Retreat from her boyfriend as he was beating her with the metal rod, if she could safely do so. Neighbor, when exercising the right of Defense of Others, “steps into her shoes” meaning if the jury decides girlfriend could have retreated, then girlfriend could not shoot abuser to stop his attack and neighbor can’t either.

When neighbor intervened and abuser attacked her, she had her own Duty to Retreat, if she could safely do so. And since abuser wasn’t originally attacking neighbor but only attacked her when she tried to stick up for domestic abuse victim, that makes neighbor the instigator of the confrontation between neighbor and abuser.

Lesson to learn: do not intervene to protect domestic abuse victims. Let the abuser beat her as long and as hard as he wants. Let the police clean up the mess when they arrive.

That’s the law in Minnesota, courtesy of Governor Dayton and DFL Rep. Paymar.

Joe Doakes

“Gun laws” aren’t about keeping people safer. They’re about keeping people subservient.

That’s as opposed to laws aimed at curbing crime, rather than people’s politically-incorrect lifestyle choices.

For better or worse – and I think it’s largely “better” – I’ve tried to keep a high level of cultural literacy, not only about the US but around the world.  At most, I’m a jack of many cultural trades, and goodness knows a master of none, but I do try. 

One positive upshot is that I know – again, for better or worse – that different cultures see things differently than we do, sometimes for reasons that may baffle us, but that make perfect sense to them for reasons that, again, baffle us. 

Downside?  You find out that many foreigners are just as stupid as many Americans are.

Earlier this week Chris Lane, an Australian baseball player going to college in Oklahoma was murdered by a couple of teenagers; the teenagers were reputedly bored and looking for something to do, and murdering Lane apparently scratched that itch for them. 

And in a burst of non-sequitur worthy of Heather Martens or Jim Backstrom, Tim Fischer – a former Austrialian deputy Prime Minister and a prime mover in the disarmament of Australians during their spasm of gun control in the nineties – has urged a boycott of the US by Ozzy tourists:  

“Tourists thinking of going to the USA should think twice,” Fischer said.

“This is the bitter harvest and legacy of the policies of the NRA that even blocked background checks for people buying guns at gunshows.

Fischer is toking from the same bong that Jim Backstrom and Heather Martens are bogarting:

• While I’ve seen no information as to where the “youths” got the gun, I’m going to suspect that it was via a source that would not be subject to a background check in any state, or any country, anywhere in the world. 
• For that matter?  The shooters were all, every last one of them, minors.  None of them can legally own or carry a firearm.  The NRA is all about keeping guns away from people who legally must not.  And five’ll get you ten there’s at least one criminal record among the bunch.
• Take a look at the few policies that actually have had a positive effect on violent crime; the NICS database in the form it was enacted, sentence enhancements for using guns in crimes, and of course concealed carry.  All the ones that actually work were supported by the NRA.  Every. Single. One.

Fischer keeps dragging on the bong:

“I am deeply angry about this because of the callous attitude of the three teenagers (but) it’s a sign of the proliferation of guns on the ground in the USA,” Fischer continued.

“There is a gun for almost every American.”

And yet the crime rate plummets.

And yet the crime rate is lowest in the places with the most  guns in the hands of the law-abiding, and highest where that right is the most abridged.

Oh, make no mistake; there are parts of the US I don’t advocate Ozzy tourists coming to.  Places where the culture has been so degraded by the devaluation of family, of social institutions, and cultures that glorify violence and devalue human life – which describes Moonshine Holler, Kentucky and Meth Circle, Suburbia as much as Crack Boulevard in Detroit. 

The NRA didn’t bring us any of those, Mr. Fischer.

Freedom-loving, energy-rich Northern Colorado is drawing closer to seceding from the rest of the Democrat-addled state:

“The concerns of rural Coloradans have been ignored for years,” William Garcia, chairman of the Weld County Commissioners, said in a statement. “The last session was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people. They want change. They want to be heard.”

Three other rural counties — Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma — also plan to place the 51st state referendum on the fall ballot. At least three more counties plan to consider the proposal this week at their commission meetings, said Jeffrey Hare, spokesman for the 51st State Initiative.

Known for its agriculture and oil and gas production, Weld is the largest of the Colorado counties exploring a break with the state after the legislature’s sharp turn to the left with bills restricting access to firearms and doubling the state’s renewable-energy mandate for rural areas.

I pondered this in Minnesota; a similar movement would be less a matter of the productive parts of the state “seceding” from Minnesota than of kicking Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, Anoka and Saint Louis Counties, and the Iron Range, out of the state.  And I suspect that’s a little constitutionally dodgier…

Forming a state isn’t easy: Even if the ballot measures pass, the Colorado state legislature would be required to amend the constitution to configure the state’s borders and refer a request for a new state to Congress.

Approving a 51st state would require a majority vote of both houses of Congress, although the Constitution doesn’t require the signature of the president, Mr. Hare said.

In other words, it won’t happen until the GOP controls both chambers (if then, given the performance of the Boehner caucus).  With any Democrat majorities at all, the idea would be dead in the water.  Can you  imagine what’d happen if Democrat parts of states didn’t have GOP regions to pay their bills for them?

“Again, folks say this can never happen. However, we are starting to hear from disenfranchised groups all over the country,” said a post on the 51st State Initiative’s website. “We are truly a divided nation. It is possible, if not likely, that we may not be the only group requesting from Congress the formation of a new state.”

A line that hovers before me in blog and news-site comment sections like a red cape in front of a bull; “most economists agree”. 

Forbes’ Louis Woodhill has at that oldie-but-goodie:

Let’s be blunt. Whatever economics is, it is not a science. Unlike physicists, who can predict an asteroid’s closest approach to earth within a few miles when it is still 100 million miles out in space, economists can’t accurately predict this quarter’s GDP. Indeed, they are still arguing among themselves about what “really” happened 83 years ago.

In light of the economics profession’s track record, it is hilarious to hear pundits and politicians say things like, “Most economists agree…” as if this mattered…It has been said that generals are always preparing to fight the last war. Similarly, at the time that our current “Pretty Good Depression” started, most of what central bankers knew (or thought that they knew) had to do with “fighting inflation,” which was the last great monetary “war.”

The post itself is entitled “America Doesn’t Need Monetary Policy, And It Doesn’t Need Economists”.  It’s a long read, and worth every bit of it.

Although since some of my best friends are economists, I’ll stick with “America doesn’t need to pay undue attention to them on a policy level”.

Imagine the media’s response if the genders were reversed in this commercial.

The dip in unemployment…wasn’t. 

Jobless rates dropped in only eight states in July from the previous month and rose in 28, the Labor Department said on Monday, as employment gains sputtered.

The slight improvement in employment last month came after jobless rates fell in only 11 states in June from May.

From July 2012, unemployment rates decreased in 36 states and the District of Columbia and increased in nine, the department said.

And in many of the states where unemployment “dropped”, it happened because the number of people in the workforce shrank.

And it’s getting worse, as employers increasingly ditch full-time employees for part-timers.  Forever21 is the first company to explicitly do away with full-time non-management employees in their stores, but they won’t be the last:

Although the ethical nature of Forever 21’s decision is debatable, it is both rational and understandable. A company that boasts regularly low prices and frequent, sensational sales, Forever 21’s competitive success is largely dependent upon its ability to maintain low manufacturing and operational costs. The ACA is an undeniable burden on this principle, and Forever 21’s management has the prerogative to take any legal measures necessary to avoid raising the costs of its products.

It is a decision that will pose moderate public-relations consequences for the company and it is an unfortunate result for its employees, but it is a pragmatic choice for any profit-driven company to make. Forever 21 will subsequently be just one of many others to take such an action if the ACA isn’t revised or repealed.

Victor Davis Hanson documents how h Obama’s crippling naiveté on human nature is devolving into dark comedy:

The almost eerie hatred for Obama seen in Egypt — among the military, the Islamists, the Egyptian Street, and even the secular pro-Western reformists — in part derives from a sense that Obama tried to cajole them all with cheap commonalities [the Muslim elements in his family history, his cosmopolitan childhood, his ethnically-mixed ancestry] and mytho-histories rather than negotiate often conflicting national interests through tough transparent talks.

A good way to get beaten up in the hallway at a tough school is to assure the local king-of-the-hill thug that both of you really have a lot in common. In some sense, Obama’s entire Middle East policy mirrors the hilarious scene in Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, where the white punk attired in pseudo-gang attire believes he can out-jive gangbangers into leaving his girl alone. He can’t. Obama has unfortunately become such a wannabe in the eyes of unapologetic Middle East gangsters.

Read the whole thing.

I keep coming back to Berg’s Seventh Law…

…no.  That’s not accurate.  Berg’s Seventh Law keeps coming up in the news. 

The Democrats’ attempts to paint issues as “racist” and “gender-hostile” – declaring “Wars on Women” on behalf of the GOP, for example – are getting ever-more frenzied (and in the case of the left’s Minnesota messaging operation, the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, clumsier and more ham-fisted). 

Why?

The answer, as with nearly everything the Democrats say about the GOP, is tucked away into Berg’s Law.  The Law reads:  “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”. 

So why the unseemly frenzy in the Democrats’ claims of “Racism” and “Wars” on Women? 

Because the GOP, in at least one key metric, is clobbering the Democrats on “diversity”:

Obama aides like his political strategist David Axelrod and Gaspard have for years been sensitive to the irony that in the age of Obama, Republicans have done a better job than Democrats of bringing diversity through their ranks. That, and the personal warmth many in the Obama orbit also feel toward [Newark Mayor and NJ Senate hopeful Corey] Booker, has helped set him up as arguably the best-connected super-junior senator in recent memory.

The Law also explains why the media went to such comically, unseemly links to try to portray the Tea Party as “racist” – because the Tea Party may have been the most un-self-consciously racially diverse political movement in recent history. 

The lesson is clear; on gender and diversity even more than most topics, don’t listen to what the Democrats say.  Listen to what Berg’s Seventh Law says they’re really saying.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There are 300 million people in the country and those Nasty Evil Republicans who implemented the sequester plan devised by John Kerry’s Super-friends Super-committee cruelly will afflict 57,000 children who can’t go to Head Start this Fall.
The article lists the complaints. No free daycare. No free dental screening. No free lunch.

Wait a minute, I thought Head Start was intended to give poor kids a leg up so they could compete academically. If it’s just another welfare program that affects a vanishingly small percentage of Americans, and those only because of hard policy choices made by a bi-partisan committee hand-picked by the President . . . what’s the problem?

But wait, it’s not only kids who are affected. 57,000 kids account for 18,000 government-funded jobs to be cut or reduced, a ratio of 1-3. That’s W-A-Y better than the ratio of Maria to the Van Trapp kids, and they managed to learn somehow anyway, during the war even.

Joe Doakes

But Julie Andrews paid no union dues, so nobody cares…

As Gary Gross notes, the DFL seems at the very least to be floating as a trial balloon that they’re doubling down on the warehouse tax. 

It’s outside the scope Governor Dayton Messinger wanted for the special session. 

I’m torn on this one.

On the one hand, I think that if the warehouse tax goes into effect, it’s going to be a disaster.  And the DFL, and its Praetorian Guard, the media – will spin it – the job losses, the dislocation, the businesses heading across the Saint Croix, the Red, and Duluth Harbor – as a Republican problem because…well…because Gay Marriage, for the Children.  Or something like that. 

On the other hand, this absolutely is the Democrats’ fault.  “Governor” Dayton signed it, I suspect, without even bothering to get Bob Hume to Ask Carrie Lucking to ask Alida for permission to read it reading it.  Being a Democrat, and a couple generations removed from the generation of Daytons who knew anything about running businesses, it didn’t matter to him. 

This is the sort of issue that conservatives – Republicans – should win big, provided that we’re in a party that has the equipment and expertise to fight a message war.

So can you see why I’m worried?

The Strib ran an editorial from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch over the weekend, entitled “A senator, scrutinizing ALEC? How dare he.”.

The headline sounds like it was written by Eric Pusey.  The rest of the editorial isn’t much better.  And the fact that the Strib runs it – ergo folds it under their own editorial umbrella – is something we need to highlight. 

The “Senator” involved is Dick Durbin – the guy who wants to bring back the “Fairness Doctrine”, among his many other atrocities. 

And it shows the Democrats, and the Strib’s, hypocrisy on many levels.  Pardon, as always, the redundancy.

Selective Indignation – Yet Again.  The “scrutiny of ALEC”, as we’ve noted in the past, is itself intensely hypocritical – but we’ll come back to that.

On Aug. 6, Durbin sent a letter to about 300 current or former corporate members of ALEC to ask a couple of simple questions. The assistant minority leader wanted to know whether the organization or corporation was still a supporter of ALEC and whether they backed “stand your ground” laws (“For Minnesota think tank, ALEC haters’ witch hunt hits home,” Aug. 14).

Now, just think for a moment what’d happen if, say, Mitch McConnell sent letters to companies asking if they supported Planned Parenthood? 

Think about it for a minute. 

The Strib editorial board would lose bowel control from the sheer anger.  Keri Miller would devote a week of her “Daily Buzz” or whatever they’re calling “Mid-Morning” these days.  It’d be one of those “Chilling Effects on Democracy” that seems to accompany any conservative activity in the minds of the media, only worse. 

Dance, Boogeyman!  Dance! – And why is Durbin so concerned about ALEC? 

In September, Durbin plans to convene a subcommittee hearing to study [“Stand Your Ground”] laws in light of the Florida verdict acquitting George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Inasmuch as ALEC’s support was critical to Florida’s 2005 decision to pass the nation’s first stand-your-ground law, it seems reasonable to ask ALEC’s members and funders whether the Trayvon Martin case changed their minds.

The bad publicity ALEC received after an unarmed Martin was shot dead by Zimmerman led many corporations to withdraw their support for ALEC.

I’m not sure – and I can’t find the data at the moment – but I’m going to say this is likely BS; I doubt they lost any significant revenue, at least not for long  Maybe I’ll find out more soon. 

But what Durbin is doing is trying to is…:

• do his bit to keep waving the bloody shirt of the Trayvon Martin case around, to keep the base riled up, and…
• do the same thing to ALEC’s sponsors that the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota did to “MNForward’s” sponsors in 2010; smear them. 

ALEC and the groups are right to tell Durbin to stick his request from whence he got his “Fairness Doctrine” proposal. 

Proof That the Strib knows DFL Voters are Incurious Lemmings Who Are Content To Let Others Do Their Thinking For them – The Pospatch, via the Strib, does the “Wizard of Oz” schtik for the low-information NPR-listening voter:

The group creates cookie-cutter legislation with the primary goal of enriching the corporate bottom line.

As opposed to the National Education Association, or the Teamsters or SEIU or AFSCME, which create cookie-cutter legislation to enrich their leadership.  Or the “Violence Policy Center”, which creates cookie-cutter gun grab legisaltion for state legislators – like the bills Representatives Paymar, Martens and Hausman wasted four months introducing in this past session, all of which were to one degree or another copied and pasted from laws in New York and California.  Or the Joyce Foundation, which not only supports gun control groups like the VPC and “Protect Minnesota” (which provide cookie-cutter legislation on Second Amendment issues to ignorami like the Metrocrat Caucus) but also partisan media outlets masquerading as “objective” media, like the MinnPost, to carry Joyce’s proxies’ water in the public information sphere. 

“They May Be An Untransparent Hack Pressure Group, But They’re Our Untransparent  Hack Pressure Group!”   – This next part is comedy gold, provided you have the capacity to laugh at the bald-faced  disingenuity of the media.  I’ll be adding emphasis:   

This is what makes this war of words so interesting. The real purpose of ALEC is to allow corporations and wealthy benefactors to avoid state ethics disclosure laws. As the nonprofit group Common Cause has meticulously noted in its complaint to the Internal Revenue Service, ALEC pretends it’s a nonprofit charity when really it’s a highly sophisticated lobbying organization that allows corporations to launder their donations without showing taxpayers which lawmakers they are buying and selling.

As opposed to “Common Cause”, which – in deep contrast – pretends it’s a nonprofit charity when in fact it is a highly sophisticated lobbying organization that allows liberal plutocrats and “progressive” advocates and groups to launder their donations without showing taxpayers which lawmakers they are buying and selling. 

That’s how the corporations want it, and that has nothing to do with freedom of speech or other constitutional protections. It’s deceit, plain and simple, and it has a negative effect on the legislative process.

Catch that?  The media – it’s the Pospatch, officially, but this editorial is no less cookie-cutter than a Lori Sturdevant article or an AFSCME-sponsored bill, let alone the ALEC bills it yaps about – is leaning on the purported “deceit” of “ALEC”, which acts, in every way, exactly like every group like it anywhere in American politics, but has been selected as the boogeyman by the Big Left, to draw media attention away from groups like…

…Common Cause, for one, which actually is everything that this editorial claims ALEC is, with comprehensive dishonesty about its own motivations thrown in for good meaure.     

“Corporate America has the right to express its opinion,” Durbin said in an interview. “The difference here is this is a secret operation and they’ve become a major political force.”

Unlike those plucky outsiders at Media Matters.  Or the Joyce Foundation.  Or AFSCME.

Or the “Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota”. 

The sooner the Strib goes out of business, the sooner Minnesota has a chance – slight though it may be – of learning the truth about what’s going on around them.

For the real story, go here and read this.

To:  All Conservative Senators
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  We Need The Truth

Senators,

It’s time to send a letter to corporations who donate money to Planned Parenthood, asking them for specifics about their positions on “Reproductive Rights”. 

Please see to this immediately. 

That is all.

PS:  Please forward this to every liberal non-profiteer, union official, “journalist” and blogger – the ones that actually think, rather than copying and pasting press releases, anyway – that you can.  And do it before noon.  I want their reactions.

If you packed the entire world’s population together equal to the densities of some of the world’s major cities, how much area would that entire population cover?

This, and many other questions, are answered among the “40 Maps that will Help you Make Sense of the World”

This stuff is like crack to me.

It’s gotta be tough to be the Strib Editorial Board.

On the one hand, you are joined to the DFL at the hip.  You run what is in effect the DFL house organ.  

On the other hand, you’re not only trying to run a business – you’re running a business in a dying industry and a garbage economy.  Alida Messinger has you on speed-dial.  You worked overtime – well, you had your people work overtime – to see Mark Dayton and a couple of DFL legislative majorities elected. 

St. Paul and Minneapolis mayoral property tax bids for 2014 came in Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, and with them the strongest indication to date of how much change in Minnesota’s property tax climate was wrought by the 2013 Legislature.

The change is in the right direction, but it’s more modest relief than the Editorial Board had hoped for, particularly in St. Paul.

As I’ve predicted for the past year, and correctly noted yesterday, the hikes to “Local Government Aid” will not lead to any meaningful property tax cuts anywhere in the state, least of all in the Twin Cities and Duluth.  True enough; Minneapolis is instituting what’ll be a fairly cosmetic cut for most people.  Saint Paul is, ostensibly, holding its taxes steady – which is not a cut at all:

Mayor Chris Coleman — who is seeking a third term this year — recommended that city levies be held flat next year. He called it a “no-drama” budget. But for St. Paul homeowners hoping for a partial reversal of the big increases in recent years, it was a disappointment. The City Council should aim lower as it sets next year’s levy.

While each city’s budget will benefit from a state infusion next year, the Twin Cities are not twins in city government size, scope and fiscal condition. St. Paul is in many ways the needier twin, more dependent on state aid, which was slashed in 2003 and has only this year begun to recover, and on homeowner taxes, which rose steeply in response.

This year’s $10.1 million LGA increase does not quite fill the $11.5 million gap projected for next year’s St. Paul budget before more state aid arrived.

Just as promised, Saint Paul isn’t putting one red cent toward reducing property taxes.  Its budget remains a grab bag of goodies for Chris Coleman’s and the City Council’s key stakeholders, the unions and the non-profits. 

Anyone who expected otherwise was deluded.  Anyone who told you it’d be otherwise is either naive or lying. 

So what is the Strib editorial board, then?