In the DFL “Unity” rally yesterday, Mark Dayton – who has funded, along with his family, the most expensive orgy of attack advertising in Minnesota history, unprecedented in both its cost and its fallaciousness –  complained:

“I expected the smears to start right away, and they have.”

He was complaining, of course, because after a month of carping on Emmer’s 20 and 30 year old careless driving arrests (and lying about his legislative record), the GOP – not the Emmer campaign – took out an ad highlighting Dayton’s genuine and recent erratic behavior.

Leaving aside that the MNGOP’s ad buy will be a tiny fraction of what “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” spent smearing Tom Emmer (on the Dayton family dime), one must ask; is reporting facts – something A4aBM never tried in re Emmer’s record – a “smear”?  How does Dayton feel about the “smearing” that his family-funded PAC has been funding for the past month?

This is the beginning of the latest chanting point from the left.  On Tuesday night, Jeff Rosenberg of the leftyblog MNPublius – a good guy, but as reliable a barometer of the direction of DFL spin as exists in the Twin Cities lefty “alternative” media since Dusty Trice exited the blogging stage in a welter of snark-splat – tweeted his vision of the upcoming discourse:

Dayton/DFL: “We should really solve the budget problem.” Emmer/GOP: “MARK DAYTON IS A POOHEAD.:

Which is an interesting take, given that while Dayton, his family and cronies have funded more attack ads in the past month than ran in the entire 2006 campaign against Pawlenty.

So let me ask you this, Jeff Rosenberg and, by the way, every single other lefty commentator: name and document one single attack that has come from Tom Emmer in this cycle, against anyone; against any of his convention opponents, or Kelliher, Entenza, Horner or Dayton.

You can not, of course.  Emmer has taken an utterly scrupulous high road – as has his main political action committee, MNForward, funded by Minnesota businesses.

But expect this narrative over the next week or two; that Dayton is a victim!

Indeed, I’m going to go out on a thick, strong limb and say Dayton will issue nothing substantial for the next week; he’ll whing about being “Targetboated”, and he’ll redouble the efforts of  his goons at A4aBM.

Enjoy this, Minnesota.  This is your 2010 model DFL in action.

Conservative have been claiming for decades that the press is biased toward the left.

It’s hard to look at the Twin Cities’ media’s record of mangled context, selective reporting and generalized ennui this past three months and reach any conclusion other than this; the Twin Cities media has an agenda.

Let’s go over the past few months’ campaign events and the coverage – or lack of it – from the regional mainstream media.

Lies?  What Lies?:  Factcheck.org determined that Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s entire ad campaign is essentially untrue.

Not a word in the Twin Cities media.

Bad For Business: Last week, the Sorosphere began claiming that Target was suffering financially due to its support for Emmer’s campaign.

A simple check of the Dow Jones for that week showed that all mid-to-upper-range retailers had trouble that week, contemporaneously with a bad consumer confidence report.

No Lie Left Challenged: the Entenza campaign tried to make hay over Emmer’s “support for No Child Left Behind”.

Emmer was opposing NCLB before it was cool – not that you’d know it from our media.

The “DUI”s:  The media dutifully reported twice that Tom Emmer had two “DWI” convictions – once in close conjunction with a smear ad from Alliance for a Better Minnesota.  They also ran with ABM’s claims that this was directly connected to Emmer “sponsoring legislation to reduce punishment for drunk drivers”, at the alleged behest of “DWI Defense Attorneys”.

The media couldn’t be bothered to fact-check the story.  The facts are:

• Emmer was never convicted of DUI.  It was “Careless Driving” in both cases.  Emmer openly admits that both cases were alcohol-related; he’s quite publicly taken responsibility for his mistakes which were, let’s recall, 20 and 30 years ago, when Emmer was in his teens and late twenties.
• Emmer’s main piece of legislation was to eliminate prior consent hearings – the civil procedure by which accused drunk drivers get their licenses returned while going through the criminal system on the DWI charge.  These cases add a huge burden to the legal system, especially in the metro area; former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Judge Magnuson supported the bill, as did groups within the Attorney General’s office.
• Emmer’s other piece would have allowed convicted DWIs to get some of their rights back after ten years of good behavior.  Neither bill would have “lessened punishments” in any way.
• The “DWI Defense attorneys” were also prosecutors, who also did personal injury and wrongful death litigation against convicted drunk drivers.  Nobody in the Twin Cities media could be bothered to note that the claim was absurd; a DWI defense attorney should want stricter penalties, which would generate more markets for their services!

“The Corrosive Effect of Money in Politics”: In mid-July, I posted some findings from research into campaign finance records that showed that the Alliance for a Better Minnesota was largely funded by a PAC called “Win Minnesota” – which, in turn, was largely funded by contributions from the Dayton family, and especially Dayton’s ex-wife Alida Messinger, an heir to the Rockefeller fortune.

This happened about a week before the Target flap – at which point the narrative turned to hand-wringing about the corrosive effect of (corporate) money in politics.

Although MPR’s Tom Scheck noted the findings obliquely at the time, and WCCO’s Pat Kessler ran a story on the subject this past week, the mainstream media in the Twin Cities has been largely uninterested.

Perhaps they’re too busy reporting on Target to note that Alida Messinger alone has given three times more money than Target, and almost as much as the entire MNForward PAC.

ABM’s Lies: By early July, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota was kicking its epic ad buy into high gear.  Their first rounds of ads was found to be almost completely devoid of fact – although that apparently never rated a mention in the regional media.

Emmer’s Legal Record – Or At Least The Parts Of It That Make Good Smear Material:  On June 28, the Strib’s Pat Doyle ran a piece about a few episodes from Tom Emmer’s legal past; an office manager what swindled Emmer’s law firm, a suit over a disputed car crash (which Emmer won), another in which Emmer had been injured, and a suit against a landscaper.

Doyle’s “reporting” was notable for the meticulousness with which it omitted any shred of information from the record that might have portrayed Emmer as anything but a heartless pushy bully.   Nobody in the Twin Cities’ media reported that…:

• ….the office manager, who took a plea deal that involved an apology and restitution to Emmer in exchange for not being prosecuted for much more serious charges, violated the terms of her plea bargain by talking to Doyle.
• That the legal wrangling in Emmer’s accident litigation was the norm rather than the exception
• That the landscaper who sued Emmer only did so because he had no case against Jacquie Emmer, and tried to sue Tom Emmer under a novel and ultimately specious theory that Emmer had “unjustly enriched” himself – in a suit that was thrown out with prejudice, with the judge requiring the landscaper to pay Emmer’s legal bills; the case had no merit whatsoever, although neither the Strib nor any other Twin Cities media outlet apparently felt the need to set the story straight.

The Detailed Plan – For a brief few weeks in June, the media and chattering classes asked almost as one “where is Emmer’s plan?” This, of course, without asking the same of any of the Democrats, whose primary race was just starting to (ahem) “heat up”.

Oddly, this would have been right during the planning phase for Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s biggest-in-history smear campaign against Emmer;  I’ll speculate that someone was trolling for material.

“He Wants To Cut How Much?”:  Much of the Twin Cities media and the leftyblog chatterbots beneath them ran with the “story” that Emmer said he’d cut the state budget by 30%.

This was, of course, based on a brief “mis-speak” during a live radio interview, which Emmer corrected immediately. This, however, remained largely unreported.

Nonetheless, radio spots for Matt Entenza after last week were still claiming that “Emmer would cut the budget a devastating 30%!”.  Perhaps nobody cares because Entenza was DOA from week one – but one needs to ask “do facts matter at all?”

“Emmer Hates Gays”:  The crux of the meme that the Dayton campaign has used to nationalize the governor’s race is the fallacy that “Emmer is rabidly anti-gay” – based on his support for a gay marriage amendment supported by a majority of Minnesotans, and I suspect a majority of legislators on both sides of the aisle – and his alleged “support” of punkdamentalist preacher Bradlee Dean and his controversial “You Can Run But You Can Not Hide” street ministry.

Nobody in the Twin Cities media bothered to fact-check the claim at the root of this meme – a story by Andy Birkey at the Soros-bankrolled Minnesota “Independent” that, a cursory examination by an amateur hobby hack showed, was built on clumsily-mangled context and some circumstantial gossip fodder.

“Local Government Aid Cuts Are Destroying Minnesota!”:  When Alliance for a Better Minnesota launched a campaign claiming that Governor Pawlenty’s cuts to Local Government Aid had caused huge problems, nobody in the Twin Cities media seemed to have the time to fact-check the claims.  It took a lowly blogger not one, not two, not three, not four, but five articles to do the sort of fact-checking that we ostensibly have a regional media that gets paid to do fulltime.

“Uncertified Teachers“:  One of the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s first claims was that Tom Emmer favors “uncertified teachers”.

A fairly detemined search didn’t show that any regional media fact-checked this story which,  of course, was a lie – Emmer favors alternative licensing, so that we can actually get enough teachers in fields like science and math where our humanities-glutted Educational-Industrial Complex isn’t producing enough candidates.

“Extreme“:  The left’s chanting point from the very beginning was that “Emmer is Extreme”.

To Rachel Stassen-Berger’s credit, she did report that Emmer’s record, at least on a range of key selected issues, is a virtual mirror of that of Margaret Anderson-Kelliher – who, Kelliher reminded us in the debate, is more centrist than Dayton.

The Big Green Stiff: Right after the convention, the DFL candidates gathered to hold a “Green Issues Summit”.  Dayton and Entenza gamboled about the fact that Emmer never showed up at the event-  which the media duly carried.

Unreported:  That Emmer had quite publicly declined to attend because it was his youngest child’s first communion.

Just thought I’d kick back and remind you all that after two months spent feverishly debunking the many, many lies of “A Better Minnesota”, and pointing out what the regional mainstream media wouldn’t – that A4aBM is largely a front for Dayton family money – the word is finally getting out.

Last week Pat Kessler basically reached the same conclusions that I did over A4aBM’s funding.

And late last week, Factcheck.org – a production of those conservative tools the Annenberg Foundation – basically agreed that you can tell Alliance for a Better Minnesota is lying when their lips are moving, in an article that excoriates the PAC for its mangling of the truth.

When you want actual facts, who ya gonna call first?

Bill Reichert’s website.  He’s running against Geoff Michel for State Senate in Edina/West Bloomington.

Andy Noble is GOP-endorsed candidate for Ramsey County Commission.

Ted Daley is running for State Senate in District 38 – Eagan, MN.  He’s been endorsed by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, by the way.

Chris Barden for Attorney General.

The story on Factcheck.org that says everything Alliance For A Better Minnesota is a lie.

I’m a fiscal conservatve.  Along with that, I’m a legal constructionist and a social libertarian, and a personal Christian by the bye.

And I generally take that “libertarian” side pretty seriously.  I don’t much care what other people do with their lives; I’d much appreciate it if they felt the same and let me live my personal life the way I want to; I’m happy to return the favor.

So my approach to “gay rights”, as a rule, is driven by all these factors.  All people must be equal before the law.  Nothing else should modify that statement – not race, gender or religion, not orientation, nothing.

My faith sees marriage as a guy and a gal getting together to start a family.  My libertarian side says that government should allow people to sign contracts, including civil “marriages”, and enforce them (and since goats and children can’t sign contracts, the “human-animal marriage will be legal” argument is something of a red herring, and it should be a fairly simple thing to legislate that groups can’t get the same rights as inter-personal “marriage” contracts without violating anyone’s right).

I happen to see marriage as a religious institution, not a civil one.  In the event I ever get married again, I’ll endeavor to avoid the state bureaucracy, to the point of eschewing the government  license if possible, and sticking with the church ceremony. And, by the way, since I see marriage as a religious institution, I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t add that a church might be perfectly within its theological purview to find a scriptural justification for same-sex marriage.  It’s difficult, of course; no major religion anywhere in the world believes any such thing – but never say never.  If theology were engineering, the Episcopals in particular could build the Panama Canal.

And I’ll exercise my right not to get married there!

I’m a Tom Emmer supporter.  While I kept quiet about it, I’ve been supporting him since last summer.  There were several moments that tipped it over for me; I’ve written about one of them on this blog before.  When an audience member asked him about gay marriage, Emmer responded without skipping a beat that while he was a Catholic who shared his church’s beliefs on what marriage is, that the only real issue in the upcoming election is jobs and the economy – and the governor would have absolutely nothing to do with any legislation on gay marriage, anyway.

And I thought “there’s a guy with the right priorities”.  And I still do.

———-

The “MNForward” flap has been a classic case of astroturfing.  Now, a writer for a “Gawker”-class snarkblog wrote me last week taking umbrage at my calling it “astroturf” because…well, apparently because his publication had written about it and they just don’t do astroturf, nosireebob.  I wasn’t entirely clear on that point.

(I was thinking about writing about how the biggest thing standing in the way of acceptance of gay rights has been gay activists – but The Onion said it better.  And they’re liberals, so they can get away with it).

But the fact is that the issue took off when the Alliance for a Better Minnesota started pushing it as a wedge; gay groups ran with it, with the able help of the regional and finally national media, trying to portray an action by very, very few people as an epic groundswell (that was going to harm Target financially, no less) even though gay issues are pretty much a nonentity for Emmer…

…and all three of the DFL contenders, none of whom has ever wasted a moment of their precious time introducing any bills to legalize gay marriage in Minnesota or speaking at all outside safe DFL districts about the issue.  Paper statements on how important it is, sure – but they have yet to put their bills where their mouths are.

The writer pointed me to the DFLers’ paper positions, as well as Emmer’s support for a constitutional amendment favoring traditional marriage, and asked me if I actually knew anything about Minnesota politics, or “am I wasting my time?”

In retrospect, I should have responded “I have virtually nothing against gay marriage outside my own personal religious observance.  Ask me about subject I care about, or consider it a waste of time and leave me be”.  I made the mistake of reading his writing about Emmer to that point – the sort of ad-hominem context-smashing that fits in in places like “Gawker” or “Dump Bachmann” – and just threw him in my spam folder.

Here’s the ironic part; if Tom Emmer were genuinely “rabidly anti-gay” and the gay community is genuinely concerned about a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, they  would be better off with him in the governor’s mansion (or, obviously, out of the House, although that wasn’t gonna happen by electoral means until Emmer felt like retiring) – since the governor has nothing to do with Consitutional Amendments.  Nothing.

At any rate, this issue exists for only one reason, as far as the DFL spin machine and Dayton’s personal smear shop are concerned; to get moderates to think “Emmer is intolerant”.  Which is absurd; he, like most of us, has strong, personal beliefs on the subject, as is his right.  It does not make him “anti-gay”, in the sense of “hating gay people”; it merely means he, like over 2/3 of the American people even in liberal cesspools like California and Oregon, opposes one policy plank of the gay agenda.

That is all.

The Dems need to turn this campaign away from what will be the key issue, and the issue that should matter to Minnesotans; what is going to do the most to bring jobs, prosperity and fiscal sanity back to Minnesota.  Because while DFLers may or may not cAare, moderates and swing voters need jobs too. And even the DFL knows that Mark Dayton loses that debate.

And so the DFL, the media and the smear machine need to make this about emotional side issues – to distract the distractible.

As far as this blog is concerned, this election is about jobs and the economy.   And I, like the parts of Minnesota that this election will affect most – workers, taxpayers, regular schlemiels – will be paying attention to that, rather than the cynical, astroturf side issue from now on.

Oh, yeah; Emmer’s going to win by 2-3 points.

(Disclosure:  I don’t work for the Emmer campaign, and never have.  I don’t get anything from them, other than what I get out of my sources on the campaign.  It’s called “reporting”).

Three weeks ago, Shot In The Dark showed you that “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, which has been funding the avalanche of anti-Emmer attack ads, is an astroturf group funded by the Dayton family and their friends, relatives and cronies (60%, give or take) and the unions (around 40%).

Today, Pat Kessler’s “Reality Check” on WCCO does the same.

While we’ve been focusing a lot on the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and their serial lies about Tom Emmer (currently accuracy rate climbing up toward 0%), the other DFL candidates haven’t done a whole lot better in the accuracy department.

Matt Entenza has been running a very dirty campaign…against Tom Emmer.  Not against Mark Dayton or Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, of course, behind whom he’s running a wan third place in the DFL primary race.

But that hasn’t kept him from spending nearly $4 million on ads so far this cycle – more than Tim Pawlenty spent in his entire winning campaign in 2006, and more than Tom Emmer might spend in this entire cycle, too.

And for that money, he’s gotten ads that aren’t any more accurate about Emmer than A4aBM’s dreck.

When I first saw  Entenza’s “Education” ad – which makes the very “tenther”-y claim that Entenza will withdraw from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – I thought that the ad’s claim that Emmer supported NCLB didn’t pass the stench test.  I have spent the past two weeks trying to get confirmation from the Emmer camp (which should hush those of you who’ve been yapping that I am “with the Emmer campaign”, capisce?), so MPR’s Catherine Richert, at MPR’s Polinaut “Poligraph”, got the story first.

I thought, like so many of these scabrous “vote” claims you see in Dems’ ads, that it was a report about an out-of-context vote that was muddied by some sort of procedural or parliamentary foible or another.  I was right:

Entenza’s campaign says Emmer voted against a plan to drop No Child Left Behind in 2008. And at first blush, it would seem that way.

But parliamentary maneuvering on the House floor muddied the intent of the amendment Emmer voted against. It didn’t just end the program; it contained other unrelated provisions.

It’s a tenet of conservatism unto the point of dogma that we want education pushed to the state and, preferably, local level; we take unjustified flak for wanting to abolish the Department of Education.  Emmer is – so we’re told! – nothing if not a thoroughgoing conservative, and Richert’s got the records to prove it.  I’ll add emphasis as appropriate:

In early 2009, Emmer co-sponsored a bill that would have prevented implementation of No Child Left Behind.

Later that year, Emmer told Minnesota Public Radio that he opposes No Child Left Behind.

“I object to the federal government having any law that tells the state of Minnesota, more importantly parents of children in the state of Minnesota, this is how your schools are going to be run,” he said on Dec. 11, 2009.

Emmer supports holding teachers accountable, spokesman Bill Walsh said. He just doesn’t think the federal government should tell the state how to do it.

That’s more like it.

In a radio ad that’s part of the same series, Entenza claims that Emmer proposes “devastating thirty-percent budget cuts”.  That’s another ancient, ripe, stinky rhetorical turd that we thought we’d dispensed with almost two months ago.  Alas, like all DFL propagandists, Entenza’s people apparently believe they can trust to some kind of diminished capacity and short attention span on the voters’ part.

And with Ventura and Franken on our collective electoral conscience, they may have a point.  But we can try to shoot for better, can’t we?

There’s nothing a tyrant hates worse than an apostate.

When the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – a radical fascist and anti-semite who hob-nobbed with Hitler and rooted for the Final Solution – first started agitating against Jewish immigration to “Palestine” before World War 2, he turned his goons loose on…

…moderate Arabs.  Not the Jews.  Because like tinpot tyrants the world over, the Grand Mufti knew that while virtually none of his people were going to convert to Judaism, plenty would be perfectly happy to seek accomodation with them; radicalism had to be made safer than peace, to keep his base in line behind him.

And tyrants, petty and otherwise, the world over have repeated the pattern; Lenin killed the Socialists and Mensheviks to consolidate his power before going after the Czarists.  Franco killed the moderates and accomodationists, as did his communist opponents.

I’m not going to say that the DFL and its friends at the various PACs – Alliance for a Better Minnesota and so on – are in that league.  Perish the thought.

Over the past week or two, the regional and, now, national left have been in high dudgeon over Target’s donation of $150,000 to MNForward, a political action committee that seeks to send gays to re-orientation camps in Colorado.

{scrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch}

Wait.  That can’t be right.  Let me look…

Whew.  OK, I had that wrong.  MNForward is a pro business PAC.

But you’d never know it from the left’s response to Target’s donation of $150,000 to MNForward, a Political Action Committee whose entire focus is on business, and the notion that a DFL governor would be a disaster for Minnesota businesses already suffering from a lagging economy and among the highest corporate taxes in the nation.

Of course, Target is far from the only company giving money to MNForward.  Best Buy and Hubbard Broadcasting (both former employers of mine), Polaris, Davisco, Red Wing Shoes, Regis (whose founder, Myron Kunin, gave $5K to “Win Minnesota”, which is the money-laundering cutoff for “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”), Securian, Pentair, Federated Insurance, the Insurance Federation of Minnesota, and Cold Spring Granite have so far ponied up something around $900,000, which is a few bucks more than the Daytons and Alida Messinger have contributed all by themselves, and less than half than what they, their plutocrat cronies, and their union supporters have given to A4aBM and “Win Minnesota” alone, so far in this race (and sources tell me A4aBM will eventually spend ten million, mostly in Dayton and union money, this cycle).  That’s less than a quarter of what Matt Entenza has spent so far, most of it attacking Emmer.

Of course, Hubbard Broadcasting is the #4 TV station in a four station market; they’re so desperate for ratings, they’ve begun experimenting with the radical notion of not appearing relentlessly left-of-center – the experiment is only partial, and the jury is still out.  Polaris and RedWing pretty much serve blue-collar clienteles; you don’t find a lot of urban “progressives” on snowmobiles or wearing steel-t0ed work boots.  Most people have no idea food processor Davisco exists, but they’re rural and thus off the radar for the urban progressives.  And most people can get a vague idea from their titles what Securian, Federated, Cold Spring and IFM do – but none of them are linked with “progressive” ideas or, to most people, any ideas at all.  (I know what Pentair does, but the odds are pretty good you don’t…)

But Target, and to a lesser extent Best Buy?  In addition to immense charitable giving to a very eclectic array of community groups and schools (Target in Minnesota’s leading corporate charitable donor, and their money helps support dozens of public, charter and alternative schools), both led the way on “diversity” in the Twin Cities.  They are widely regarded as “progressive’ companies, and both have long put their money where their corporate mouths were when it came to acting “progressive”.  Both actively worked to support GLBT employees; I knew not a few gay managers at Best Buy, and their orientation seemed not to harm their careers in the least; I’ve never worked for Target, but friends who have tell me it’s at the very least the same.  And that’s a good thing – because both companies led the way in recognizing that a person’s orientation has nothing to do with his or her productivity, talent or merit.

So what happens when a “progressive” company donates to a candidate that dissents from the economic policies of the party that has tried to seize the word “progressive?”

They’re seen as apostates – “traitors”.  And Big Progressive – that combination of Big DFL, Big Labor, Big Gay, Big Open Border, Big Academia and so forth – know that they must destroy apostates.

So A4aBM and its cronies in the “Human Rights Coalition” – a Big Gay group – have spent the past week painting Target, that most progressive of companies in that most progressive of places, Minneapolis – as “anti-gay”.  Because of a contribution to help Minnesota’s business climate, supporting a candidate who Big Progressive wants – needs – to paint as “anti-gay”.

(Is Emmer “anti-gay”?  He’s been on record supporting traditional marriage amendments; he’s also said on the Northern Alliance that it’s really a side issue for the governor – as it in fact is.  Is supporting traditional marriage “hate”?  Is it “rabidly anti-gay”, as a gay co-worker of mind called it?  I think it devalues the term “hate”, but as PJ O’Rourke said, I’m not a liberal, so I’m not an expert at stuff I know nothing about…)

And so Target and Best Buy, the “apostate” “progressives”, must be destroyed, while the Polarises and the Hubbards and the Securians and Pentairs get left alone; no “progressive” is ever going to start doubting the mother faith because a snowmobile manufacturer or a rural food processor or a granite company supports Tom Emmer.

But “progressive” Target and Best Buy?  That’s a threat.

And so the thoughtcrime must be punished.

Earlier this morning, we busted Jeff Rosenberg at the DFL-congruent MNPublius carrying the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota’s water in a piece riddled with factual errors.

And when you catch someone carrying foul, deceptive water, it’s best to go back to the well.

Here’s what A4aBM had to say about the legislation in question:

In fact, records show that the Minnesota County Attorneys Association opposed the bill Emmer introduced, as well as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Office of Public Safety.

At least A4aBM got that part right – as far as I can tell, anyway.  But that should not be a shock; the County Attorney’s Association will always oppose any law that takes away discretion and power from county prosecutors, or inconveniences them in anyway.  Emmer’s laws would have…:

• allowed drunk drives to be considered innocent until proven guilty, and…
• …allowed those convicted of DUI to get some of their rights and privacy back after ten years of good behavior.

That is all!  Of course, it would mean that county prosecutors would have to prove people guilty to the standard of reasonable doubt rather than have the accused considered guilty until proven innocent. And Mothers against Drunk Driving would, it is safe to say, repeal the Bill of Rights if it meant they could lower the blood alcohol content to .06%.

But that lone bit of factiness is lonely in this press release:

The attorneys testifying in favor of the law were private attorneys who, according to their web sites, defend those arrested for drunk driving.

Yes, attorneys Weidner and Stokes defended drunk drivers.  And, as I showed in this morning’s piece, they also did family, child custody, criminal defense, prosecution, personal injury and product liability and – in the interest of completeness – litigation against drunk drivers.

A4aBM either is too sloppy and stupid to check this out, or they are actively trying to deceive the public.  I’m voting for “b”.

“Emmer is trying to run from the fact that he introduced a bill that lessened penalties against drunk driving,” said Denise Cardinal, Executive Director of Alliance for a Better Minnesota Action Fund.

I see no evidence that Emmer’s “running from” anything.

Because do you know who else supported Emmer’s “implied consent” bill?  The one that would have treated accused drunk drivers as innocent until proven guilty – exactly the same as Democrats want terrorists in US custody treated?

Former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Judge Eric Magnuson. And DFL attorney general Lori Swanson. [EDITOR’s NOTE:  While I’m told the Attorney General’s office did in fact support the bills because the Implied Consent hearings are an immense cash and time suck, I am still looking for the actual cite.  When I find it, I”ll un-strike it – Ed]

A source close to the story emailed me:

Weidner told me last night that the AG actually supported this bill. He is going to find the letter they sent…He also told me Chief Judge Magnuson supported it and threatened to end implied consent hearings b/c they cost so much.

Perhaps A4aBM has evidence that Magnuson (and, so my source says, the Attorney General’s office) are also “soft on drunk driving?”

I’ll be interested in seeing if A4aBM or Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius, who’ve led the way in trafficking the “alternate realities” about this story, plan on accounting for those facts.

As re A4aBM, I’m going to suggest they’re just going to keep lying – down to the simplest of facts:

Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Emmer’s campaign made false claims on Wednesday when it stated that prosecutors asked Emmer to sponsor a bill that lessened penalties for drunk

In other words, “Emmer lied about talking with prosecutors”.  It’s quite an accusation.

But even the Dayton-friendly Star/Tribune debunks that claim:

Emmer referred most questions on the bill to Stillwater attorney Tom Weidner, who works for a law firm that handles prosecution for 10 municipalities in Washington County and also does criminal defense, including DWI cases.

So why does the A4aBM, and sites like MNPublius who serve mainly as DFL press release vehicles, so brazenly repeat such bald-faced lies?

Because they assume the voter is stupid, and they still think in the pre-blog paradigm that assumes that absent any dissenting opinion they’ll stay that way.

Let’s see what we can do about that, shall we?

When it comes to politics this year, you need to remember the following rule of thumb; when the DFL or one of their affiliated blogs writes about Tom Emmer, you need to distrust, and then verify.  Because the ratio of BS to truth is the worst I’ve ever seen.  Ever.

When I was a kid, growing up in small-town North Dakota, one of my dad’s best friends was a lawyer.  The guy took all sorts of cases; wills, divorces, probate and wills, criminal defense, criminal prosecution, civil litigation, commercial litigation, contracts, and pretty much anything else that came through his office door.  He was also in the rotation for public defender duty, and for helping out the prosecution, and he did a stretch as municipal judge (carefully watching for conflicts of interest).

So if I were to write this lawyer “was a defense attorney”, someone could read the above and bellow “HAH, Berg,  you are teh lier!  He is a civil litigator!”  And you’d be right.  And you’d also be proving you need a reality check.

The law, especially small-market law, is full of such things; small-town prosecutors contract with general practice lawyers to help with caseloads without adding headcount; small-town public defenders offices may not even have a lawyer, but get lawyers from the local bar (legal, not liquid)  to help out; it’s not unknown for an indigent accused murderer to be represented by someone whose “specialty”, if you can call it that, is probate.

And let’s not forget those lawyers have to keep their fields straight, as a matter of professional ethics, while avoiding conflicts of interest.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Last week, Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius figured he’d “caught the Emmer campaign lying”.

Emmer’s opponents have been carping for months about the fact that Emmer:

1. Got drunk driving-related convictions in 1981 and 1991 – twenty and thirty years ago.  When he was 19 and 29.
2. He paid his debt to society, decades ago, exactly as he was supposed to.
3. During the 2008 session, he pushed two bills:  one that would have given convicted drunk drivers some of their rights back after ten years of good behavior, and one that would have upheld the radical notion of considering drunk drivers innocent until proven guilty.We’ve talked about this before.

The left has spent the past week or so spending a half a million dollars of Alita Messinger’s money talking about the DWI “issue”; the offenses, and Emmer’s supposed “soft on DUI” policies.

That’s all bad enough.   But as we’ve learned this past few weeks, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” is a reliable liar.  More on that at noon today.

I’m less used to calling Twin Cities’ DFLbot-blog MNPublius on basic integrity.

But this piece at by Rosenberg, entitled “Emmer’s DWI bill written at the request of DWI attorneys,” walks up to the line between ambiguity and deception, piddles on it, walks back, jumps into a monster truck, spins cookies on the line, and drives across past the “FLAMING FIB-VILLE, 2 MILES” sign at 80 miles an hour.

Here’s “the scoop”:

I already wrote about this a bit below, but I buried the lede. The more I think about this, the more I think it’s a major story that Tom Emmer’s DWI bill was written at the request of DWI defense attorneys, especially because he’s obviously trying to mislead the public about that:

On his campaign website, Emmer said: “At the request of local prosecutors, Rep. Emmer agreed to author their bill to reform the court system and how DWIs are handled. The legislation prepared by the prosecutors and other interested parties with the assistance of nonpartisan House research staff would have provided incentives for early and immediate prosecution of first-time offenders.”

The Emmer campaign identified the “local prosecutors” as Tom Weidner and Sean Stokes, and said they are based in Stillwater, Washington County. Stokes and Weidner are attorneys specializing in DWI defense, according to the website of their law firm Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling. [Emphasis mine]

Local prosecutors? Excuse me? Once again, Emmer may not technically be lying, but he’s also definitely not being straight with us. He’s trying to make it sound like this bill was written to help local law enforcement officials, when in fact it was written at the request of DWI defense attorneys.

“Emmer may not technically be lying”?  No.  He is in fact telling the truth.  Knowing that Stokes and Weidner worked both as contract prosecutors and “DWI Defense Attorneys”, I asked a source familiar with the case in which capacity the two lawyers operated while discussing this bill:

The only thing I know about that is that Weidner said no cities asked them to ask for bill & Stokes id’ed self as [prosecutor] during testimony.  Probably fair to say Weidner and Stokes argued for bill based on their prosecutor experience, but not b/c of any city’s request.

Now, if Jeff Rosenberg would like to suggest that Tom Weidner and Sean Stokes – who are, let’s remember, officers of the court – blurred the ethical boundaries of their field while giving testimony to the Legislature on these bills, I’m sure the Bar Association would be interested in hearing about it.  Bring actual evidence, of course.

However, if you believe WCCO, in a story they ran when this “issue” first came up before the MNGOP convention, that’s just not true; Weidner and Stokes do prosecution work.

But OK – so maybe Rosenberg doesn’t know how the practice of downmarket law works.  That’s hardly a grave offense, is it?

Well, no.  But a misleading presentation of facts is.

Using the facts above, Rosenberg writes that Emmer wrote the bill  “…at the request of DWI defense attorneys”, and that Weidner “…must have been acting in his capacity as a defense attorney” and declares “Stokes and Weidner are attorneys specializing in DWI defense, according to the website of their law firm Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling….You can see that these are clearly not the people who should be responsible for crafting our DWI laws”.

He accompanies this claim with a screenshot from the law firm’s website that shows Weidner and Stokes “specialize” in DUI law.  This has, in fact, been the chanting point among local leftybloggers and twitterbuildup; “Emmer operated on behalf of DWI defense specialists”

So I checked the website.

Turns out Kevin Weidner also “specializes” in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death, Auto Accidents (including, ironically, sueing people who kill or injure people in DUIs!), and  general Criminal Defense (of everything from juvenile crimes to murder).  And there’s more; check out his page at the firm.  And that doesn’t include the contract prosecution work.

And in addition to DUI, Sean Stokes “specializes” in Family Law, Divorce, Child Custody, and general Criminal Law.   Here’s his bio page.

So the left’s defamatory meme notwithstanding, Weidner and Stokes are not “DWI  Defense specialists”; indeed, as we’ve seen above, they litigate for both the plaintiff and defendant in DWI cases for their practice, in addition to prosecution work for whom the client, the plaintiff, is Washington County.

(Is it even possible to “specialize” in a firms’ entire criminal and family area?)

So, to use Rosenberg’s term, MNPublius and the rest of the Minnesota Sorosphere that is spreading the “Emmer works for DWI defense lawyers” meme aren’t “Technically” lying; they are just presenting a set of facts that is so cherrypicked and misleading that nobody reading their account stands a snowball’s chance in hell of learning the truth.

So – why does the local left feel the need to spread such a defamatory lie?  Because  lies are  the only weapon they have against Tom Emmer?

And Jeff Rosenberg – why is MNPublius, once a leftyblog with integrity (Aaron Landry notwithstanding) participating in such a transparent wad of buncombe?

At the very least, shouldn’t your piece have been titled “Emmer’s DWI bill written at the request of after consulting attorneys who defend and sue DWIs, among pretty much every other area of criminal and family law, as well as DWI prosecution”?

It doesn’ troll off the tongue, but it’s more accurate.

———-

Do the state a favor, Minnesota Left; put a fork in this stupid meme.  Move on to your next lie.

We’ll be waiting.

A:  Their fingers are moving over a keyboard.

The Dayton-family-funded attack-PAC ran this on Twitter last night – and, as with most lefty memes, when you see it one place, you see it everywhere:

.@TomEmmer says he never sponsored a law to lessen penalties for DWIs… Here’s his signature: http://twitpic.com/29rwsk #stribpol #mn2010

Um, no.  He didn’t vote to “lessen penalties”.  He voted to allow convicted drunk drivers to get some of their rights back after ten years’ good behavior, and voted for a provision that would allow accused drunk driver the radical right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota has no shame – but we should all be ashamed of them anyway.

I saw this bit on CBS News yesterday – entitled “Target Boycott Movement Grows Following Donation to Support “Antigay” Candidate” – and I thought “Wow.  Sounds like there’s a wave of spontaneous anti-Target fervor out there!”

Then I – or “we”, actually – looked a little deeper.

The piece – featuring someone named “Roadie Roaring” or “Rudy Rattan” or something’; the woman’s diction is less-than-ideal – shows her walking into a Target, exchanging a bunch of goods, and demanding that her Target card be cut up.

It’s presented as if it were a spontaneous bit of reportage.  Look at it, you be the judge.

We’ll come back to Ronnie Roller in a bit.

With about three seconds to go in the piece, it notes that it was “Produced for the Uptake by Bill Sorem”.  I got an email from someone who follows these things:

Bill Sorem has records on Mn Campaign finance of giving a couple hundred bucks to the SD42 DFL (which includes Eden Prairie, the city where the faux boycott took place), and a $2300 contribution to The Obamanation.  So…a known DFL supporter just accidentally has his video camera and tapes this bit of faux news that is designed to threaten businesses into not contributing to causes that might benefit GOP candidates, helping his DFL party.
 
But of course, Bill has no unclean motives….NOOOOOOOOOO!

So – Bill Sorem just may not have  been a random passerby with a camera. 

The Uptake, by the way, is a left-leaning “citizen journalism” videoblog that spent the last year trying to convince the Legislature that they were a “news” organization worthy of credentials to cover the Legislature.  Now, they are participating in an attack ad run by “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”. 

So who is “Roofie Raygun?”

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring emails me:

Phil said that Rondy Raiton “sounds strangely similar to Randi Reitan, a gay activist mother who frequently is on the op ed page of the Strib.”
 
I googled Randy Reitan & clicked on her images page. BINGO!!! So much for this being a chance happening. Rest assured that I’ll be posting about this this afternoon.

So when you google Randi Reitan, you get – voila!  The picture of someone who is not only not just some random Target customer, but in fact is someone who is relishing her fifteen minutes in the spotlight.

A skim through the Federal Electi0ns Commission database shows that Mrs. Reitan has given over $10,000 to various Democratic candidates over the past decade or so (Patty Wetterling in ’04 and 05, Tim Walz, Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg, several to the DFL, a bundle to America Coming Together, a grand to Al Franken, a thou for Paul Wellstone, and much, much more.  Plus another $300 to Mark Ritchie and $200 to the House DFL Caucus, according to the MN Campaign Finance board.

And her husband Phil?   Around $4,000 more.  Son, Jacob?  Another thou and change.

At the beginning, where Mrs. Reitan introduces herself, perhaps it would have been helpful and honest if she’d called herself “a mother, grandmother, and DFL uber-activist“.  Just saying.

So to summarize:  Alliance for a Better Minnesota (and CBS News) want us to swallow the following:

That Bill Sorem Just Happened To Videotape A Random Outraged Customer:  It’s hard to say if the producer wanted this event to look like a candid camera incident; it certainly looks staged.  But it was presented by the Uptake, by A4aBM, and by CBS as an organic, grassroots, random protest against Tom Emmer and against Target’s donation to the “MNForward” PAC, which supports Emmer in the gubernatorial election.  This is bad journalism.

That The Uptake Is Anything But An Arm Of The DFL: After participating in an ABM attack campaign – which, as we noted two weeks ago, is funded by unions and, mostly, Mark Dayton and his relatiives – future protestations of being “journalists” should be taken with a large block of salt.

Long story short; the Uptake is staging the news for the ABM’s, and the DFL’s, benefit.

This is not journalism.

UPDATE:  Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring does some more checking on Randi “Random Customer” Reitan.

UPDATE 2: An emailer writes:

Let’s see if I have this straight (pardon the pun):
 
Some little old granny, after seeing Target giving money to a group that supports Tom Emmer, who might not support gay marriage, goes down to her local Target store, where she just happens to run into an Uptake ‘reporter’, who just happened to have his video equipment on hand to witness the events that transpired.
 
Of course, there is no “CONTEXT” to the event.  What you don’t see:
 
#1  “Granny”, her husband, and her gay son have given well over $10,000 to DFL causes over the years.  $0 to GOP
 
#2   The gay son founded “Equality Ride”  http://www.soulforce.org/article/1024  which spreads the message:  “to empower young activists and challenge the unfair school policies that discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students.” [We’ve covered SoulForce’s odd mission here]
 
#3   The husband of “Granny” is on the Board of “Soulforce”  http://www.soulforce.org/article/891  whose Vision Statement is:  “We seek freedom from religious and political oppression for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning people.”
 
Nope. “Granny” has no bias…no vested interest…no hidden motives.  She just happened to bump into the guy with the camera at Target.

It would have been different, to an extent, had Reitan not gone to such pains to set herself up as just another woman off the street – “a mother and grandmother” – in the setup.  But she did!

Why?

And why would “journalists” like the Uptake misrepresent a staged shoot as “news?”

You gotta hand it to Nick Coleman.  While his sympathies for the lumpen gray Minnesota left were almost too obvious to joke about, he at least went to the trouble of hilariously claimaing to be “nobody’s monkey”.

But when the DFL puts out a street organ,  Jon Tevlin puts on a funny suit, grabs the handle and starts grinding:

Mark Dayton’s campaign ads tend to feature timeworn photos of his family’s department store downtown. For those old enough to remember, the pictures conjure memories of whimsical Christmas displays, fat old Santas and the smell of caramel corn wafting from the candy store.

Down the street, Target, the discount chain that Dayton’s launched, has carved a similarly feel-good atmosphere that makes us crave that lime green wastebasket or retro toaster, even if we don’t really need it.

Now that Target has jumped into the corporate political sweepstakes by donating $150,000 to an organization that supports Rep. Tom Emmer for governor, you have to wonder whether every American outing will eventually be tainted and influenced by the nasty politics that divide us.

You mean, like every child’s “outing” to school, every single day, is “tainted” now that the teachers’ union has donated at least twice as much to the anti-Emmer “Alliance for a Better Minnesota?”

By Tuesday, Target was on the defensive because of the immediate response of gays and lesbians, many of whom are no doubt valued “guests” of the Tar-zhay experience.

“We rarely endorse all advocated positions of the organizations or candidates we support, and we do not have a political or social agenda,” Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said.

Target offers domestic partner benefits and was a sponsor of the recent pride parade. But some gay groups are now criticizing Target because Emmer is against gay marriage.

And right there is your proof positive that Tevlin is getting his writing marching orders directly from the DFL.  Because while Emmer is no more a gay marriage supporter than most Minnesotans, he’s also correctly noted (in this Northern Alliance podcast from the State Fair) that the next governor of Minnesota has much, much bigger problems to deal with, and that it’s never really going to be an issue for that governor.

This is proof, by the way, that there is no way to appease the liberal special interest monster; as Tevlin notes, Target gives benefits to domestic partners, has aggressively led the way on “diversity in the workplace”, sponsors Minneapolis’ annual Pride rally, and among its 160-plus milllion in annual charitable giving are not a few bucks to gay-friendly non-profits.

But offend the gay political orthodoxy by supporting a candidate who supports business policies more palabable to Target’s board’s fiduciary duty, and you might as well be Andrew Dice Clay.

Like here:

OutFront asks that Target rescind the donation or give to one supporting candidates who fight for gay rights.

I have a better idea, Target; keep doing what you’re doing, and tell OutFront to go to WalMart.

I, on the other hand, like to think of our political system as a delicate product. So remember, Target, if you break it, you own it.

Does that mean Alida Messinger and the Minnesota Federation of Teachers are shoplifting?

Oh, by the way?

Thanks, Target.

In many ways, the classic Minnesota corporations have always been the very model of “good corporate citizens”.  These corporations – 3M, Daytons (now Target), Medtronic, Mayo, Best Buy and many more – gave profusely to Minnesota charities, schools, universities, arts, research…the whole works.

But they’ve also gotten squeezed, hard; has bad as taxes are for individuals in Minnesota, they are much worse for businesses; Minnesota has among the worst corporate tax rates in the country.   And the entire DFL slate – Dayton, Kelliher, Entenza and stealth-DFLer Horner – are running on platforms that involve “creating jobs” by taxing the living daylights out of corporations and their investors.

As we run up toward the primaries, groups working with the DFL – especially the Dayton-funded “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” – has poured a sea of money into advertising against Tom Emmer, and it’s just started.  This past week, another group – MNForward – finally put an ad on the air pointing out Emmer’s positive approach to creating more jobs; getting government out of the way of the businesses, small and large, that’ll lead any recovery that happens.

And the DFL is shocked, shocked that some businesses are willing to help keep the Democrats from plundering the state.

The DFL has been hooting and hollering that Target, among a few other businesses [disclosures here – PDF alert] has given money – about $100K – to MNForward.

Among them was DFL representative Ryan “Don’t Call Me Henry” Winkler, who tweeted around eightish last night:

Target fundshttp://tinyurl.com/26bcfkw Emmer adhttp://www.mnforward.com. Emmer anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-min. wage. Target guests agree?

Anti-gay?  Huh?

A bit later, Darin Broton – a PR flak – tweeted back:

@repryanwinkler – Has Target given the House DFL Caucus money this cycle? Past cycles? DFL incumbents?

Winkler responded to Broton:

Nope. Never…

Later yesterday evening, WCCO-TV’s Esme Murphy ran a report on how Democrats were supposedly staying away from Target because of this advertising donation – which prompted me to wonder how many Democrat wonks Murphy hangs out with; the lines at Target in the Midway, deep in the most Tic-infested district in Minnesota, were as long as ever.  Perhaps they were all Republicans? I doubt it.

The Strib also reported that, despite the economic downturn that’s prompted them to lay off people at the corporate office and close a distribution center, than Target is not easing off its charitable giving:

Last year the Minneapolis-based retailer gave $169 million nationally in cash and in-kind contributions, making it, by some reckonings, Minnesota’s most generous grant maker. For the past five years its largess has significantly outpaced that of the McKnight Foundation, Minnesota’s No. 2 donor, according to the Minnesota Council on Foundations. Between 2004 and 2008, Target’s annual giving rose steadily, from $96.3 million to $169 million, while the McKnight Foundation’s went from $75.4 million to $93.6 million…

…Arts organizations around the country are particularly dependent on Target for providing free or reduced admission to museums, theatrical performances and events. Its beneficiaries in the Twin Cities include Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Children’s Theatre Company, Guthrie Theater, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Children’s Museum, Circus Juventas, Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and the Latin American Folklore Dance Company

No matter to Rep. Ryan Winkler, who responded to Murphy via Twitter:

@esmemurphy Target has been good corp. citizen, but MN political spending is new. Your show just showed risk of giving to candidates.

No.  It showed that it’s dangerous being a for-profit business in Minnesota, under the watchful eye of the DFL.  That it’s dangerous to cross the all-beneficent, all-knowing Mother Party.

It shows the risk of crossing party hacks like Steve Winkler, who think that corporate political giving is “new”, and that corporations should just shut up and take it – for giving $100,000 (which is, by the way, $761,000 less than various members of the Dayton family and Dayton’s ex-wife Alida Messinger have given in this cycle to “Win Minnesota” alone).

And it shows the risk of actually having to run a political campaign on donations from people and companies that actually have to earn their money, as opposed to merely inheriting it; the DFL will try to keep you from earning that money.

It’s the Chicago Minnesota DFL way.

Me?  I’m off to Target.   I’m going to buy something I may not even need all that badly.  And I’m going to write “thanks for donating to MNForward” on the charge slip.

Contrast this ad with the scabrous, fact-free, ad-hominem tripe Alliance for a Better Minnesota was foisting on us over the past few weeks:

Who’s the actual governor, here?

I’ll be on Rob Port’s “Say Anything” show on KZFG “AM1100 The Flag” in Fargo at 6:35 Monday morning to talk about the Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s role as a front for Dayton family money in trying to buy the election.

I’m including the UStream feed here:
Streaming live video by Ustream

And here’s the chat feed:

So tune in!  You can also listen via the AM1100 website. Call in at 888-598-8464, or email rob@sayanythingblog.com.

I’ll be on Rob Port’s “Say Anything” show on KZFG “AM1100 The Flag” in Fargo at 6:35 Monday morning to talk about the Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s role as a front for Dayton family money in trying to buy the Minnesota gubernatorial election.

I’ll be running links to the live video stream and the chat room starting about 3AM Monday morning.  Tune in via any means necessary (including AM1100’s live stream)!

So far in this campaign, as the DFL hammers its way toward its primary next month, most of the attacks against Tom Emmer have come from a shadowy group, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.

I’ve busted them repeatedly stretching the truth and/or lying; Channel Five followed suit earlier this week.

But who are these people?  And where did they get the money to run all these slick (if utterly truth-free) ads, and all these posh (but amateurishly-designed) websites?

Because they run through a lot of money!

2006 Campaign – We first heard of “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (A4aBM) during the 2006 campaign.  During that outing, A4aBM spent $2,545,162 – about $2.3 million of it in ads against Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Where did that money come from?

Their donor list is as follows:

• CWA COPE $5,000
• MAPE $5,000
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $5,000
• MN AFL-CIO $5,000
• United Food Comml Workers $7,500
• Ma Mah Wi No Min Fund1 (Mille Lacs Tribe) $7,000

Unions and Native American gambling interests so far; no big surprises.

• Tom Kayser (MN) $7,500  [One of Mike Ciresi’s cronies]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $15,000
• MN Nurses $15,000
• United Steelworkers $22,000
• Afscme Council 5 – $25,000
• Lks and Plains Carpenters $25,000
• IBEW MN State Council $25,000
• Intl Union of Operating Engineers $25,000
• America Votes MN $30,040 [aka “ACORN 2.0“]
• Coalition for Progress $50,000 (Mich)
• Laborers Dist Cncl $60,000
• Pat Stryker (CO) $100,000
• SEIU MN State Cncl $100,000
• Educ. MN $135,000
• Tim Gill (CO) $300,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $746,000
• Win Minnesota $778,500;

So – out of two and a half million dollars spent, about 20% – about $449,000 – came from those whom I thought were the most likely suspects, the unions.

And nearly 2/3 came from two sources – “Alida Messinger”, and a group called “Win Minnesota”.

We’ll come back to both of them.

2010 Campaign So Far – To date in the gubernatorial campaign, A4aBM has raised $93,386 (as of this past Tuesday).  They’d spent $72,383 of it as of Tuesday (on ads that were, as we ascertained earlier this week, wall to wall bullcrap).   Of that $93,386, 79.636 of it came from the “Win Minnesota PAC”.

So that’s two election cycles in a row (so far) where “Win Minnesota” has been the leading funder of scabrous hit pieces against Republican candidates.

Win Minnesota?  Seems pretty innocuous, doesn’t it?

Who is “Win Minnesota”, And Who Funds Them? – Here’s the list of major contributors to “Win Minnesota” during the 2006 campaign.  I’ll be adding the emphasis for reasons that’ll become fairly obvious:

• Anne Bartley (San Fran) $25,000 [Linked via the Rockefeller foundation to Alida Messinger – whose maiden name was “Rockefeller” and who…well, we’ll get back to that.  She’s also linked to Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Leadership Council” and former Clinton administration figure]
• Shayna Berkowitz (Mpls) $100,000; ]
• John Cowles (Mpls) $20,000; [Why yes, the former Strib publisher!  But don’t you dare say the Strib is biased!]
• Andrew Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• David Dayton (Mpls) $5,000;
• Eric Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• Mark Dayton (Mpls) $25,000;
• Mary Lee Dayon (Mpls) $100,000;
• Vanessa Dayton $1,000;
• Sandra Ferry (NY) $50,000; [Yet another Rockefeller – sister of Alida Messinger]
• Barbara Forster (Mpls) $25,000; [generic liberal with deep pockets]
• Roger Hale (Mpls) $100,000; [Former Daytons’ executive]
• John Harris (PA)$20,000;
• Myron Kunin $5,000; [Hair care tycoon]
• Kim Lund (Mpls) $25,000
• Darlene Luther 47A Committee $10,000 ;
• alida Messinger (NY) $165,000;
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $20,000;
• Linda Pritzker (TX) $30,000; [Scionette of the Hyatt fortune, big-time liberal with deep pockets; major donor to MoveOn.org]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $10,000;
• Tina Smith (Mpls) $10,000;
• Linde Uihlein (WI)$100,000; [Schlitz heiress, long-time political plutocrat]
• Julie Zelle (MN) $5,000

That was a lot of Daytons, and people linked with the Daytons…wasn’t it?

So how about this year?

So far in 2010, “Win Minnesota” lists the following donors to “Win Minnesota”‘s current warchest (currently worth $1,173,500), again with emphasis added by me:

• Andrew Dayton $1,000
• David Dayton $50,000
• John cowles $25,000 [Remember him from 2006?]
• MaryLee Dayton $250,000
• Emily Tuttle (MN) $5,000
• Ronald Sternal (MN) $5,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $500,000
• James Deal (MN) $50,000
• Roger Hale (MN) $10,000 [Remember him from above?]
• Barbara forster (MN) $25,000
• Democratic Governors Association $250,000;

So of the $1.1 and change million warchest, $851,000 came from Daytons, and Alida Messinger.

But wait!  There is another fund registered with the state, with a different account number but with the same email and street addresses, that has $850,000 socked away but has spent no money.

And where did that $850,000 come from?

• Alida Messinger (Mpls) $50,000
• Win Minnesota $50,000
• Education MN $250,000
• Laborers District Council $100,000
• MAPE $50,000
• IBEW MN State Council $50,000
• MN Nurses Assc $50,000
• Local 49 Engineers $25,000
• Vance Opperman $50,000
• Afscme Council 5 $50,000
• MN AFL-CIO $25,000
• SEIU MN State Council $50,000
• AFSCME (Wash DC) $50,000;

And who is this Alida Messinger who has contributed so mightily – over $1.46 million over the past four years! – to the cause of disinforming Minnesotans about Republicans?  Other than the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller III?

The ex-wife of candidate Mark Dayton.

So “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” is essentially a front for a group of unions and, to the tune of millions over the past four years, Mark Dayton’s family, friends and ex-wife.

They are paying millions of dollars to advertise – and hiding it from casual view behind two layers of astroturf.

Mark Dayton is trying to buy the election, but he’s taking great pains to make sure you don’t know about it.

Dog Bites Man:  DFL-linked pressure group lying like a bunch of crack addicts caught with a stolen Lexus.

Man bites dog;  Twin Cities media checks the facts against objective reality.

If you read the Twin Cities center-right alternative media, you know that “Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota” is the most honesty-challenged roomful of bags of suppurating demi-human byproduct since Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund was still on peoples’ rolodexes.

But if you get your news from the Strib, the PiPress, MPR, WCCO or KARE11, you’d never know.

But KSTP5?  Glory be – truth matters to someone!  Channel Five’s “Truth Test” segment went over A4aBM’s latest TV ad effort and, well, probably lost the A4aBM account for Channel Five.

The ad tries to link Emmer … to Governor Tim Pawlenty. It claims Emmer sided with Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force CEOs and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

This claim is false, at least according to the date of a house vote cited in the ad. On May 10th, Emmer did vote against a bill that would have increased income taxes by $443 million through the creation of one of the highest tax rates in the nation. But it makes no mention of CEO or corporate taxes. Every house Republican voted against it, along with 16 Democrats.

And it gets better:

The ad also claims the two supported a plan that created a huge deficit and cut funding for items such as health care, education, and job training.

This claim is also false. It’s a reference to the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Pawlenty’s 2009 unallotment plan the legislature did not vote on. The ruling did have the effect of reinstating nearly $3 billion from the previous year’s deficit, but it didn’t create a new deficit.

And that man is getting down and gnawing that dog’s leg to the bone:

Based on the series of misleading or false claims, this ad gets an “F” on the Truth Test.

The center-right blogosphere has been catching A4aBM in lies ever since their web site, Twitter and Facebook accounts and ads all went on the air, two minutes after Emmer won the nomination last May.

So why does the DFL and its minions try such transparently, stupidly, sloppily deceitful propaganda?

Because it’s not aimed at smart people.  It’s aimed at the people the DFL counts on for winning elections; people who don’t pay attention; people whose understanding of issues stops at the last slogan they heard; people who bring nothing to democracy but a vote for the DFL.

It doesn’t have to pass scrutiny, if they know their audience won’t scrutinize it.

The “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” – an astroturf group sponsored by a consortium of DFL-linked pressure groups – has been behind much of the smear-mongering against Tom Emmer so far this campaign. They’ve occupied themselves with a klutzy false-flag website, a couple of twitter accounts (one of baldfaced propaganda, and one, “StuffEmmerSays”, that tried to mock Emmer statements but actually made him sound like Ronald Reagan to the point I spent the last month mocking it as a pro-GOP site; it seems to have worked, and the account seems to have demised).

And if that’s the best the DFL can do, this election’s not going to be nearly as hard as I’d worried.

“A4aBM” ran the first anti-Emmer ad of the campaign this week; and the Republican Twitterverse has been redounding with bits and pieces of the information A4aBM got wrong.

Long story short; the ad is warm runny bulls**t.

Claim #1: Audio: “Tom Emmer sided with Governor Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force corporations and CEOs to pay their fair share of taxes”  ABMBackup: “On May 18, 2009, Emmer voted against the second attempt at a DFL- written FY2010-2011 revenue bill…

Sounds pretty gnarly, huh?

The Truth: Tom Emmer did not cast a vote on this roll call.

Oh, my.  You mean, A4aBM got a fact wrong?

Well, the ad is 0-1 so far.

Claim #2: Audio: “They cut funding for education” ABM Backup: “On April 18, 2007, Emmer voted against HF 6, the K-12 funding bill, which passed the House with a huge bipartisan majority of 119-13. On May 8, 2007, Emmer again voted against the bill as it was re-passed on a similar 119-14 vote…

Voted against it twice?  Emphasis added:

The Truth: After April 18, 2007, there were no additional votes taken on this bill that year.  During the 2008 session, this bill was used as a “vehicle” and a delete-all amendment was added completely changing the bill.  The vote they reference on May 8, 2007 was actually a vote on May 8, 2008 and it wasn’t a vote on the bill but, rather, a procedural vote on whether the bill should be taken from the table.  Emmer voted against taking the bill from the table.

You’re trying to say A4aBM lied about the real intent of voting on a picayune procedural technicality in the life of a background-noise bill to try to smear Tom Emmer?  Say it isn’t so!

0-2 so far.

Claim #3: Audio: “[Tom Emmer and Tim Pawlenty] cut funding for education.”

The Truth: There is nothing in the bill cited that included a cut to education.  In addition, KSTP’s Tom Hauser recently had this to say about the claim that Governor Pawlenty cut education funding: “As for Pawlenty cutting education funding, that’s not true.  According to the education department, per pupil funding has gone up since 2004.”

0-3 – well, more like 0-4, really.

Claim #4: Audio: “[Emmer voted to cut] job training.”

The Truth: Nowhere in ABM’s backup is there any support for this claim.  “Training” is mentioned only once in the legislation, and that is in reference to home ownership education.  This bill had nothing to do with job training.

Zero for five.

Claim #5: Audio: “[Emmer and Pawlenty cut] job training and health care”.  On screen: “Source: Minnesota House Journal, 4/25/2005”

The Truth: According to the Minnesota House of Representatives Journal, the House was not in session on 4/25/2005, meaning there could be no Journal of the House for that day.  The Alliance’s citation, therefore, does not even exist.

So the lesson for today is, whenever “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” speaks, distrust and then verity.

Because the DFL asssumes that you, the people, are too stupid to know any better.

Bill Salisbury, the longtime Capitol reporter for the PiPress, is a generally credible reporter on Minnesota politics issues.

But even Deans of Journalism make their errors.

Salisbury wrote in this piece (to which I’ll add emphasis):

A liberal advocay [sic] group today released the first TV ads attacking Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.

The political arm of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota spent more than $500,000 to start running the 30-second spots statewide, according to their press release.

In the interest of clarity, Salisbury should have written “A liberal advocacy group today released the first TV ads attacking Republican candidate Tom Emmer that the DFL and Minnesota left actually had to pay real money for“.

Otherwise, great job!

…and you’re wondering why there are forty nebbishy white guys with professor glasses and Elvis Costello hair cuts in front of you at Subway asking if there’s arugula and if the salami is free-range, and if the line at Caribou is paralyzed by perpetually outraged-looking women who look and sound like Sarah Vowell gabbing about why the Minnesota History Center is allowed to keep “his” in its name, and if you say “teabag” outloud and instead of a nervous titter or an uncomfortable shuffling of feet you get a round of applause so very very unanimous as to feel just a little bit odd?

Not to worry.  “Netroots Minnesota” is going on at the Hilton Garden.  “Progressive” bloggers will be coming from all over Minnesota and, one suspects, beyond, to demand more Hope and Change now!, and to respond in perfect enthusiastic unison “off what and how high?” when George Soros tells them to “Jump”.  Expect to see little clots of nervous twentysomethings who’ve never been east of the light rail wandering around lost; look for graying ex-hippies wandering the streets begging for cops to taze and teargas them so they can be in the news too, unaware that the RNC ended 14 months ago.

Look for the only people of color in the room to the on the panels or working for the hotel.

Some “highlights”

Tools to Hold Your Opponents AccountableSAT, 11/21/2009 – 3:30pm, Ballroom
Think your opponent has some skeletons in the closet? Are they prone to gaffes? Learn how to uncover their public records, negatives and voting record, as well as tracking the candidate on the campaign trail.
PANELISTS: Sally Jo Sorensen, Bluestem Prairie; DJ Danielson, Field Organizer, MN House DFL Caucus, 2008; Laura Askelin, President SEMN Labor Council; Liz McLoone, MN AFL CIO Field Representative & former Senate Majority staff.

In other words, “how to be a blog stalker”.   Because the local leftyblogosphere has such a shortage of ethics-challenged jagoffs who see themselves as ace reporters.

Push ‘N’ Pull: How Traditional Advocacy Organizations and Netroots Activists Can Create Progressive Change Through Impact Journalism and Action
SAT, 11/21/2009 – 10:15am, Town Square Ballroom

A one hour discussion with reporters, advocacy organizations and outreach communicators on how to create impactful stories, reach out to interested advocacy groups, and bring about action that will create real change. We will also walk through a case study of how one article written in September of 2008 eventually forced John McCain to concede Michigan.
PANELISTS: Paul Schmelzer, Center for Independent Media; Hanaa Rifaey, Center for Independent Media; Denise Cardinal, Alliance for a Better Minnesota

Hint to leftybloggers:  save the money on this one; all they do is tell you to call the Republican “crazy” in a thousand different ways.  A good thesaurus will do the trick.

Oh, yeah – and if you ever wondered about the rigorous fairness of the Strib’s coverage of regional politics, wonder no more (emphasis added by yours truly)!

Gubernatorial Candidate ForumFRI, 11/20/2009 – 6:00PM, Town Square Ballroom
DFL candidates for governor will join us at Netroots Minnesota to take questions directly from you. The candidates will be asked questions solicited online via Twitter, Facebook, and email, and in person, during a discussion moderated by Star Tribune writer Lori Sturdevant.

I wonder if Star Tribune writer Lori Sturdevant will badger the DFL candidates to move to the center to return to the sainted “bipartisan” glory days of Minnesota politics?

Any bets on that?

Hey – I wonder if I could get a Strib columnist to host the next MOB party?  Other than Lileks, I mean?

Anyway, welcome to Saint Paul, Netroots (and if I were a classy fella like some of the leftymedia, I’d come up with a borderline obscene sexual reference for your gathering, and believe me, with a term like Netroots, there are a zillion of them, but that just isn’t how I roll).  I’ll be the guy selling “free range cocktails” from the pushcart on the street.

UPDATE:  I missed one:

Netiquette: From Polite to Pit Bull, Where Do You Cross the Line?

FRI, 11/20/2009 – 3:30PM, Phalen Room

We all have candidates we love and candidates we hate. Now it’s time to have an open and frank discussion about how to help our favorites online. Does being polite get you ignored? Does being a pit bull make people hate the candidate as much as they hate you? When is it too much, and how to handle abusive commenters? And, as always, learn how what to deal with anonymous trolls on your sites.

PANELISTS: Minnesota Observer, blogger; Mark Giselson, Kurt Schiebel, blogs as Flash

Since the vast majority of leftybloggers are anonymous trolls (there are exceptions, but I’m talking the rule here), that discussion will be either very short and dry or very, very long and animated.

As far as that “Does being polite get you ignored? Does being a pit bull make people hate the candidate as much as they hate you?”  Well, Flash has the “polite” thing generally down, so I’m going to guess Gisleson is supposed to be the “pit bull”.  To which I’d love to ask – where does “pit bull” start, and “profane and overbearing” end?

And as far as “does it make the candidate hate you” – they really should be interviewing the Dump Bachmann people and, for an extra perspective, people from Bachmann’s office.  I’m fairly convinced that the Dump contributed at least a point to both of Bachmann’s victory margins; between them and the City Pages fairly loathsome cover story this week, I think there’s a two point floor right there that the lefthsphere has given the good Representative.