Turd-Polishing

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Desperate to keep the stadium finance “plan”…er, afloat, the state is making another big push to try to sell “E-Pulltabs”:

In Duluth on Tuesday night, about 35 charities and bar owners showed up for a chance to test-drive all the electronic pulltab and bingo games now available in Minnesota. They got tips from charitable gambling leaders and bars along the North Shore who use them. They received the latest data from state officials on Minnesota’s most popular e-gambling counties, the effect on charity collections and more.

“I’ve seen the machines before, but I’ve never tried them,” said Duluth bar owner Mike Ronning, checking out the electronic pulltabs. “It’s fun. I just don’t know if it’s right for my place.”

The upshot:  people are still keeping them at arms length.

One wonders if we might have saved a whole lot of trouble doing thisbeforethey made them the key revenue-generator in the state’s Viking stadium jamdown.

Get The Popcorn

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Benghazi story keeps getting weirder.

Notice the FBI is on the job. The first 5 suspects have been identified, but not enough evidence has been gathered to try them in court. Enough exists to kill them if the Big O says so, but not enough to capture and try them. Is it just me, or is this administration’s War on Terror policy bewildering?

The guy who made that Mohammad video must have been the greatest filmmaker of all time, to provoke this much response with one low-budget flick.

Joe Doakes

And the “Poles” who attacked the radio station at Gleiwitz must have had some serious momentum to have started all that fuss by themselves.

Whilst Shopping

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SCENE:  MITCH Berg is shopping at an electronics store.  Avery LIBRELLE runs into him in the aisle. 

MITCH:  So – your president is kinda going nuts, here, siccing government agencies on private citizens and dissident groups. 

LIBRELLE:  Ha ha, Merg.  All of this surveillance started under Chimpy McBushitler!  If you supported it then, you have to support it now!

MITCH:  For starters, Obama’s ramped it up to a new level; I’ve seen no evidence that Bush took the domestic surveillance to anything like the level that Obama has. 

LIBRELLE:  So there’s an amount of domestic surveillance you deem acceptable?

MITCH:  Sure – with a warrant, and observing the due process of law that’s supposed to be a Fourth Amendment right. 

LIBRELLE: Hah!  So you’re a Fourther.

MITCH:  I suppose you could say that.  Weren’t you a Fourther when Bush was President?

LIBRELLE: That was different.

MITCH:  Ah.  OK.  Secondly, I didn’t support it back then.

LIBRELLE:  You didn’t stop it!

MITCH:  How would I stop government surveillance?

LIBRELLE:  By blowing the whistle.

MITCH:  I don’t work anywhere near the field.

LIBRELLE: What is this “Work” you keep talking about?

MITCH: Fair enough.  Thirdly;  you complained about government surveillance under Bush…

LIBRELLE:  Hissssssssss…

MITCH:  …but Bush did little more than expand on policies that Bill Clinton…

LIBRELLE: Yaaaaaay!

MITCH: …initiated with his 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Counterterrorism act, which greatly expanded the Fed’s wiretapping and domestic surveillance rights.  I mean, do you remember “Echelon?”

LIBRELLE:  The thing that had all you paranoid Faux-News-watching Alex-Jones-listening Bristol-Palin-is-Trig’s-Mom-believing wingnuts pooping in your pants back in the nineties?

MITCH:  Right.  The government’s purported effort to create broad-based systematic eavesdropping on domestic telephone and online communications. 

LIBRELLE:  Yeah! 

MITCH:  So let me be clear here; you supported Clinton’s domestic wiretapping and surveillance efforts?

LIBRELLE:   Of course.  There were Right-Wing militias roaming the countryside blowing up federal buildings and churches and kidnapping Cuban kids. 

MITCH:  Right.  But under Bush…

LIBRELLE: …it was oppression of domestic dissent!

MITCH:  …while under Obama…

LIBRELLE:  …he’s got a war on terror on two fronts – the Middle East and here at home!    And if you oppose him, you support putting bombs in the hands of right-wingers like the Tsarnaev brothers!

MITCH:  Um…gotcha.  What’s in the bag?

LIBRELLE:   All my electronics.  I’m having the service department wrap them in tinfoil.

(And SCENE)

The Toddler Government

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Bush put tracking devices in assault weapons and let them go to Mexico so we could track down drug cartels. Obama gave assault weapons to drug cartels to up the body count to justify gun controls in the US.

Bush tracked a few international calls to find terrorists. Obama tracked all of Verizon’s domestic calls to find terrorists.

Obama supporters are quick to remind us Bush Did It First and when Bush did it, it was illegal but now, it’s not. But there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between the two administrations’ actions. And Bush didn’t specifically run on a platform promising never to do that again.

The Democrats’ logic is: My brother stepped on an ant so I blew up a school bus full of nuns. Because he started it. And while I’m no better than he – in fact, I’m worse – he started it. So what I did was okay.

“Only a little worse than Bush,” that’s the Democrats’ new defense.

Joe Doakes

This is the sort of thing that makes a parent ground their kids.

How do we ground a government, again?

Especially one that is actively suppressing any attempt to ground it?

We’ll Get The Government Saul Alinsky Says We Deserve

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It was one of those “Mission Accomplished” moments.  But not in a good way.

A week or so I was talking with someone who was considering running for a fairly important political office. 

This person would be anidealcandidate for this office – by which I mean both “as a candidate” and “as a conservative policymaker”.  I’m not going to go into specifics – I don’t want to give anyone the faintest whiff of a thread by which to identify them. 

So what’s holding them back? 

Nope – not the fundraising. 

It’s the trashing they’d expect to get from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota (with the willing connivance of a media that carries ABM’s water). 

And I have to think; that has got to be one of Alida Messinger’s goals – to make running for office as a conservative such an intimately-brutal, self-abnegating torture test that good people can’t justify putting themselves and their families through it. 

Mission Accomplished.

You-Know-What League…

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As an annoying leftyblogger might say, “Oh, noes!” – The One’s popularity has dropped below that of George W. Bush:

In a Gallup tracking poll released Tuesday, former-President George W. Bush currently stands with a favorability rating of 49%, compared to 46% who see the 43rd president unfavorably. Meanwhile, another Gallup poll shows President Obama with only a 47% approval rating, with 44% disapproving.

And perhaps that makes sense; Obama has carried on all of Bush’s policies; he merely shifted the bad ones into hyperdrive (Obamacare is really just Medicare Part D strapped to a rocket).

And in retrospect, as bad as Bush was on spending, he was and remains a minor-leaguer compared to the Obamessiah. 

Dare we say…Bush league?
If you think about it, this makes perfect sense.
After all, Obama fooled everyone when he ran as the anti-Bush in 2008.
Everyone thought Obama meant he would be less hawkish than his predecessor. But as we have seen, Obama apparently has no problem killing American citizens via remote control with drones or greatly expanding upon Bush’s surveillance state. This, even though Obama told us he had pretty much won the War on Terror.
Therefore, it appears that what Obama meant by promising to be the anti-Bush is that, unlike George W. Bush, Obama would not get us out of a recession and into many years of economic prosperity. There would also be successful terror attacks on American soil during Obama’s watch and a litany of scandals unseen in almost a half-century.
Maybe the next time a former community organizer raised in a creepy church runs for president, the media will work a little harder to dig into his real agenda.

The Death Of A Million Cuts

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 When the DFL-controlled legislature started jacking up taxes, we tried to warn ‘em.  “North Dakota’s gonna eat Northwest Minnesota’s lunch”. 

But did they listen?

Pffft.  They know what “A Better Minnesota” means, peasant!

Oh, the left trotted out its talking heads.  “It’s really fairly marginal”, said the heads, snug in their academic offices in the Twin Cities.

One of the Marginal Ones up in Moorhead has had enough:

When service station owner Brady Olson decided politicians weren’t listening to him, he took to the airwaves to protest higher taxes that he said were cutting into his profits.

 

“Hi, I’m Brady from Brady’s Service,” he said in a 30-second radio spot. “Minnesota has quietly been turning my business in to a tax collection business.”…Olson and other business owners in northwest Minnesota say those higher taxes make it difficult for them to compete with businesses in North Dakota, where the booming economy has allowed legislators to cut taxes.

To a talking head in the Twin Cities – who, likely, has never run a business or made a payroll – it’s just nickels here, dimes there. 

But nickels and dimes add up:

 With Minnesota legislators recently deciding to increase cigarette taxes by $1.60 a pack, Olson said, “Now they’re in the well again.”

 

Olson was particularly critical of the higher cigarette tax, which on July 1 will be $2.83 a pack. North Dakota’s cigarette tax is 44 cents a pack.

 

As a result, Olson expects to lose a few customers. He said people who buy cigarettes in Fargo will likely buy gas there.

And the bottom line?: 

Olson said every tax increase makes it tougher for his family-owned business to compete with convenience stores a mile or two away in Fargo. He pointed to gasoline as a key example of taxes that make his profit margin smaller than that of a North Dakota business.

I did mention the academics, didn’t I? 

As Minnesota lawmakers struggle to pay for essential services while allowing companies to remain competitive with those in nearby low-tax states, a big question is whether such tax disparities can kill a business.

 

There’s not much evidence to support that, said David Flynn, an economist at the University of North Dakota.

 

“When it makes a difference, they move or they change their business tactic,” said Flynn, who has studied the border business climate. “When it doesn’t make a difference they complain, but we don’t see a noticeable change, a business shuttering the windows or anything of that sort.”

 

Flynn said taxes are generally not the key factor in where business locates. As an example, he cited Minnesota’s lack of a sales tax on clothing. Although North Dakota taxes clothing purchases, there are more clothing stores on the North Dakota side of the border.

And there’s the point that everyone (on the left) misses, always.

There’s more of everything on the North Dakota side.  Moorhead, Breckenridge and East Grand Forks are pale, wan little bedroom towns across the river from Fargo, Wahpeton and Grand Forks (respectively) that are booming, and have always far outstripped their Minnesota neighbors in employment, in business growth, in everything. 

In short, the point isn’t that the border doesn’t reflect the disparities today over taxes discussed last month; it reflects decades of different approaches to taxes and regulation, which the current session will exacerbate.

Read the whole thing – it’s from MPR’s Moorhead correspondent, and it does a decent job of stringing together the story, including the non-sequiturs from the apologists for the Minnesota system.

Driving While Black, Tired, In Shape And Ailing

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Arizona man arrested for DUI – with a blood alcohol level of 0.00:

Jessie Thorton, a 61-year-old retiree, was arrested and charged with DUI in Arizona despite having a blood alcohol level of 0.00. The reason the arresting officer gave to Thorton: “I can tell you’re driving drunk by the look in your eyes.”

Thorton, a retired firefighter who, because of his wife’s schedule as an ER nurse, often sleeps during the day, was pulled over at 11 pm in Surprise, Arizona after police officers say they witnessed him crossing the white line in his lane.

“He (the officer) walked up and he said ‘I can tell you’re driving DUI by looking in your eyes,’” Thorton told ABC 15 in Arizona.

Thorton, who had been working out at a nearby LA Fitness, told the officer his eyes were bloodshot because he’d been swimming at the gym’s pool.

One of several lessons for the day follows:

“He (the officer) goes, ‘Well we’re going to do a sobriety test.’ I said, ‘OK, but I got bad knees and a bad hip with surgery in two days.’”

The officer then made Thorton take a sobriety test.

“At one point, one of the officers shined the light in my eye and said, ‘Oh, sorry,’ and asked the other officer if he was doing it right,’” said Thornton.

Talk to your lawyer – or any lawyer – about the advisability of refusing to take the field sobriety test (there are those who say refuse it, period; I’m no lawyer, so don’t take my word for it), but the fact is that “field sobriety tests” are not about determining if you’re sober.  They’re about supporting the officer’s case against you in court.  They are not designed to make you look sober; they are, in fact, not designed to be passed at all.  Go ahead – recite the alphabet backwards right now, assuming you’re sober.

The “war on drunk driving” has slopped across the lane into absurdity.

Read the whole thing.  It gets worse.

Raging Against Utopia

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

They must have mis-understood the question or the results would not have been so dramatic.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

He’s talking about the poll results in the linked article.

And given the publicity that, er, certain sociological statistics supposedly emanating from the problem that the “bill” would address have gotten in the US (I’m working hard not to give out any spoilers), the result is doubly interesting.

Chanting Points Memo: “The DFL Cuts Property Taxes!”

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One of the DFL and media’s (ptr) hoariest chanting points is the idea that “Republicans raised property taxes!”, and that the DFL – due to its tender regard for the middle class – is hotly engaged in cutting them.

This is a classic low-information voter play, of course; the state doesn’t set property taxes.  City and county governments do.

All the state does is send money, in the form of Local Government Aid (LGA) and Market Value Homestead Credit (MVHC) to cities and counties to subsidize their activities…

…and then, theoretically, those lower levels of government use that money to lower their citizens; since they’re getting money from the state in the form of tax dollars redistributed from the rest of the state, they can tax their own citizens less.

Right?

Well, no.  Usually not.  If you’ve read this blog, you already know more than most Democrat voters; that when LGA was “cut” over the past decade, cities and counties raised vastly more in tax hikes than they’d actually gotten from LGA in the first place.  Such is the addiction of government at all levels to spending.

And now that the DFL has cranked open the spigot again, what’s going to happen?

A PiPress editorial last week notes that “government will cut property taxes about the time I’m caught by paparazzi leaving a Los Angeles club with Amy Adams” is the proper answer to that.  I’ll add emphasis:

A Pioneer Press report this week on 31 metro suburbs cheering the restoration of funding they receive from the state included this note of caution: “There’s no guarantee cities won’t spend all the new state money on services, salaries or public works projects.”

Reporter Bill Salisbury cited findings in a 1990 analysis by the Office of Legislative Auditor that “state aid may boost city spending more than it provides local property tax relief.”

It said cities had used 82 percent of their additional aid to pay for increased spending and only 18 percent to reduce property taxes. Citizens should be prepared to hold their local lawmakers accountable.

But the DFL – and, for the most part, the media – have done their best to diffuse this accountability, to couch this “aid” in terms of “Free money borne down from the sky by unicorns”, rather than money taken from the parts of this state that work – the Twin Cities exurbs and some prosperous outstate communities – and redistributed to smaller towns with lower tax bases (the original intent of LGA) and the Twin Cities and Duluth (which was not, but which became the primary focus of LGA over the past 20 years).

But the editorial is right.  The DFL spent most of the past decade trying to make the case that hiking LGA was a matter of cutting property taxes.

It’s not, and has never been.  It’s been a money transfer, mostly from the parts of the state that are run responsibly, mostly to the parts of the state that are not.  And the smart people already know that this new money is going to overwhelmingly pay for new spending, especially new union-dues-paying government labor.

And as this last election cycle showed us, it’s not enough just to win the smart people.

These Jobs Are Going, Boys, And They Ain’t Coming Back

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Demolition starts today at the old Ford plant in Highland Park, at the southwest heel of Saint Paul. 

Because they just don’t build Ford Rangers anymore, due to the vanishing market for half-ton pickups, leading to the complete bagging of the model, I’m sure.

Nothing to do with the state’s business taxes and environmental regulations.  Perish the thought.

Justice Is Blind – But Berg’s Law Sees And Knows All

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I’ve added a new corollary to “Berg’s Law” – especially in light of events of this past seven months and the doddering, bobbleheaded liberal punditry to which Real Americans have been subjected.

It’s the “Fugelsang Corollary to Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection” (Berg’s Seventh 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.”)

It reads as follows:

The Fugelsang Corollary To Berg’s Seventh Law – a liberal who uses “I’m happy with my penis size” as a conclusion to a debate on the Second Amendment doth protest too much.

The thing about Berg’s Laws are that they are, in actual practice, absolute and inviolable.

100 States?

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A big chunk of Northern/Northeastern Colorado are actively pursuing secession from the rest of the state, to form – they hope – a 51st state.  Sick of the onrushing dim-bulb “progressive’ statism that’s engulfed the Boulder/Denver/Colorado Springs corridor, with its attendant spending, rapacious taxation and suffocating regulation, the more traditional, rural, conservative parts of the state have had enough.

[Weld county commissioner Sean] Conway said the new laws don’t support the interests of the northern part of the state, which is rich in agricultural history. Conway said that’s why he and others are proposing to break away from Colorado to form a new state.

“This is not a stunt. This is a very serious deliberative discussion that’s going on,” he said. “There’s a real feeling that a lot of folks who come from the urban areas don’t appreciate the contribution that many Coloradans contribute.”

Parts of Nebraska are also apparently interested in joining in on what would be a new state.

It’ll likely come to nothing; most Americans have been painstakingly taught that re-arranging our states in any way equals supporting slavery.

But there’s a historical precedent:

Conway says five of the current 50 states were created through a similar process. He says the proposal is “likely” to end up on a Colorado ballot this fall.

“The whole purpose of doing this is to preserve an agricultural way of life and to protect the energy sector, that we feel is very much under assault,” Conway said.

Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican Congressman from Yuma, told The Coloradoan in Fort Collins he’s not sure how he’d vote on such a measure, but he says he understands why the measure is being floated at this time. He says Democratic leaders controlling the state Legislature and the governor’s office have not been listening to their constituents in rural parts of the state…If voters in those counties decide they want to move forward, then the county commissioners would ask state lawmakers to approve the plan, and then petition Congress for statehood.

Of course, if the proposal ever did make any headway, the urban parts of the state – which depend, as they do in Minnesota, on the exurbs and the rest of the state to keep up a steady stream of tribute to the central government – would no doubt bog the idea down in court actions and worse until kingdom come.

But leaving all that aside – I think it’d be a fascinating idea here in Minnesota.

Clearly, Minnesota is two states that are stuck together, like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, more out of tradition, a historical accident based on lines drawn in the 1840s when Minnesota was a sparsely populated swampy wilderness, than out of any rational political, demographic or social reason that they should be forever together.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have an “East Minnesota” – basically what are now the 4th, 5th and 8th Congressional Districts, the Twin Cities and Duluth and the land they’d need to build their high-speed choo-choo between each other – on the one hand, and “West Minnesota” the rest of the state, form separate states?  Perhaps with a capitol in Rochester?

The new states would make more economic, political and social sense than the current one does; “West Minnesota” could orient itself economically toward the rest of the region, while “East Minnesota” could then endeavor to prove its long-standing premise that it carries the rest of the state.

In fact, this would be true of many states; Upstate New York would no doubt love to be rid of NYC and Long Island; greater California would no doubt love to cast its lot with Arizona, Utah and Nevada rather than be stuck with the endless money suck of Los Angeles.

(Likewise the Dakotas are all wrong; the eastern halves of both states have more in common with each other politically, economically and socially than they do with their western halves, which are also pretty much alike; “East Dakota” and “West Dakota” make more sense than North and South Dakota do).

We’re From The Government And We’re Here To Help

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Student loan fraud has nearly doubled since 2009. Something about 2009 sounds familiar. What happened in 2009?

Oh yeah, that was the last year private lenders made student loans. After 2009, the federal government took it over as part of Obamacare, so the interest paid by students would offset health care costs for poor people.

Either this is a government-run program that’s twice as corrupt as a private-run program, or half as competent. Who could have seen that coming?

joe doakes

Who could have seen it coming?

Less than 47% of the people, unfortunately.

Send Lawyers, Guns And NARN

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Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

  • I’ll be in from 1-3PM.   We’ll be talking with some representatives from the Patriot Ride, benefitting our state’s veterans.  Then, we’ll be talking with Siri Free, Miss Minnesota, as she gets ready to help crown a new Miss Minnesota!
  • Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

Join us!

The Left Hand Doesn’t Know What The Further-Left Hand Is Doing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freeloaders

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails in re the Wisconsin legislature voting to evict a liberal “watchdog journalism” group from the UW Madison offices they’ve been occupying rent-free.

Doakes:

Journalists are the next favored minority?  So they must continue to receive free rent at the public university?  Or else it’s a huge Republican scandal?

The numbers are not working.  They claim to be operating on a $400,000 budget.  I don’t believe that for one second.  Not with 4 paid “professional staff” and 4 interns, paid.  Even with free rent, utilities, paper and donuts I don’t believe they would meet that budget.  I just don’t believe they are paying themselves low enough salaries to make that number work.   So that tells me there is hidden money funding them in addition to other support, like the free rent, utilities, donuts and paper.That’s the real issue.  The U at Madison, a bastion of liberal nonsense, is funneling taxpayer resources into a Liberal organization by the backdoor.  So lock the door.  Makes sense to me.

This is what responsible adults do when cutting the budget – they throw out the freeloaders.  This group has never heard of that notion because they live in Madison, a responsible-adult-free zone.

Joe Doakes

Joe links to a Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel piece in the Pioneer Press, which sets up the story:

An independent, nonpartisan investigative journalism organization facing expulsion from its offices at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is doing what one would expect from an investigative journalism organization.

“We are mounting an aggressive response,” said Andy Hall, executive director of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Hall was granting interviews Wednesday with media and watchdog journalists and bloggers across the country.

Whenever the media strenuously claims another media organization is “independent and non-partisan”, you may be assured they are not.

The “Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism” is sponsored by George Soros, as well as the liberal Joyce Foundation, which also funds the MinnPost  and lobbying/propaganda shell group “Protect Minnesota”.

And if knowing them by their sponsors doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, then know them by their work:

In 2011, the center broke the story about state Supreme Court Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley getting into a physical altercation.

The “story” they “broke” turned out to be a gross distortion that the “WCIJ” spun into a political stunt to benefit the Wisconsin Democrat party as they got ready to wage the battle over the legislative and gubernatorial recount.  The WCIJ is no less a bunch of partisan hacks than their fellow Soros project, the late, unlamented Minnesota Independent (and, it’d seem, its up-market replacement the MinnPost).

The freeloading “journalists” should not only be expelled from their publicly-funded digs, they should be perp-walked out while being pelted with rocks and garbage.

It’s That Time Of Year Again

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The time of year for senseless-but-fun studies trying to associate peoples’ traits, behaviors and peccadilloes to their politics.

Today?  What your choice of beer says about yoru politics:

Smithwick’s is never mentioned. What are they afraid of?

(And who am I kidding?  It’s always that time of year.  Although I’m sure it’s time for a “study” “proving” that liberals are smarter, any ol’ time here).

MinnPost: Heather Martens’ PR Firm

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The MInnPost is an organization I’d very much like to respect. It includes a raft of people I’ve considered good reporters.

But over the course of Minnesota’s gun debate over this past session – brought on by Minnesota DFL legislators launching a raft of authoritarian gun bills, including at least one that called for confiscation of certain firearms – the MInnPost has shown a very crafty bias toward the anti-Second-Amendment crowd. From Erik Black’s series suggesting that the Second Amendment was just too complicated for modern people, to the fawning coverage the entire publication gives Heather Martens (“Executive Director” and one of very, very few actual members of “Protect Minnesota”), down to Doug Grow’s apparently pre-written slime job on Representative Hilstrom’s compromise “good gun bill” during the past session, the MinnPost has supported the orthodox anti-gun line to a fault.

Why is that?

It might be this:

I’m not sure, but a $50,000 grant from the rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation might have something to do with it.

No, correlation doesn’t equal causation. The fact that the MinnPost threw all sense of objectivity and journalistic detachment to the wind this past session on the gun issue and getting a nice-sized grant from a group that has bankrolled anti-gun groups around the country for over a decade could be purely a coincidence.  And it’s not like opposing the Second Amendment doesn’t come along with the left-of-center beliefs most of the staff hold. 

But when I read Doug Grow’s “coverage” of a post-session wrapup party for “Protect Minnesota“, the piece had the faint whiff of “PR” to it.

Given the outcome of the legislative session, the tone of Tuesday night’s meeting sponsored by Protect Minnesota was surprising.

Heather Martens, who leads the organization that long has been a force for advocating for stricter gun-control laws, urged the 23 people who attended the North Minneapolis meeting to think about the “successes” that came out of the session.

On first blush, that may seem like a hard thing to do, given that gun-rights organizations got all they wanted: No universal background checks, no limits on magazine capacities, no assault rifle bans.

It’s simple. There were no successes. Heather Martens – who has never, not once, uttered or written an original, non-numeric statement about firearm policy that wasn’t a lie – and her “group” were, er, shot down at every turn.

But “Protect Minnesota” doesn’t exist to convince people. It exists to manipulate the media – and, via them, the people.

 

Confederates! With Guns! Defending Slavery!  

Which may be what led to this next statement by Grow (with emphasis added):

And by the end of session, cowed legislators refused to even have a floor vote on anything resembling major gun-law change.

That’s just wrong.

The legislators weren’t so much “cowed” as organizing behind Deb Hilstrom’s Good Gun Bill (Ortmann’s in the Senate). Half of the House, comprising reps on both sides of the aisle, co-authored her compromise bill.  And when the backroom “negotiations” between the metro DFLers (who were carrying Heather Martens’ water to the point that one, Rep. Alice Hausman, let Heather Martens do her job for her) broke down, the bills were scuppered from the floor by a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and responsible outstate DFLers.

But that doesn’t fit the “big bad NRA!” narrative, does it?

History Is Written By Those With The Printing Presses

Grow carries on his stenography for Martens (emphasis added):

Martens told the group there was victory in the bipartisan support for $1 million to fund a law that requires the state to file data with the feds on those who should be prohibited from owning firearms.

The law requiring the state to file the data was passed in 2009 but was never funded, essentially making it useless.

Will Grow mention that it was a DFL legislature that scuppered that funding? The metrocrat Democrats didn’t want a bipartisan-backed background check to give the impression that it worked better than actual harassment of the law-abiding citizen.

“But Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln…”

Grow feels obliged to list the outcome of the tiny group’s self-therapy session:

The successes:

Phone-banking (more than 1,000 calls to legislators sitting on the fence).

Legislators reported that constituent calls ran at least 50:1 against the DFL’s bills.

Media coverage was complete.

Yeah, the suspense was killing us on that one.

That’s what Heather Martens does – get friendly media coverage. She’s the Larry Jacobs of the gun issue – the one, single, sole person that every Twin Cities “journalist” calls for the left’s take on guns in Minnesota.

We’ll come back to that.

“Wait – That Was Your “Intellectual” Argument?”

One of the other “Successes”, according to Grow:

Finding a “visceral” message, one that appeals to the emotions as well as the intellect.

I got a laugh there.

Emotion is the only message Heather Martens’ group has! Talk with any of her group’s “members”, I dare you. You’ll get a broadside of anger and grief over Sandy Hook (but never, ever Chicago, or any other crime scene where the kids don’t look like the children of NPR executives) – and not even the faintest whiff of an “intellectual” message.

Although, as always, I do invite Heather Martens on the NARN to make that “intellectual” case. I’ve been asking for nine years, now.

You Don’t Do Business Against The Family

As Martens via Grow noted above, one of their “successes” was “complete” media coverage.

Now, there’s no surprise there. Most of the media editors and producers in the Twin Cities support gun control. Other reporters, I suspect, haven’t the depth of knowledge on the issue to know that pretty much everything Heather Martens has ever said on the issue is a lie.

But Doug Grow’s piece – really, his entire history covering Martens for the MinnPost – has been at a level of obsequious fawning that outstrips the rest of the media.

Why?

Well, I’ve got a theory.  And remember – it’s just a theory.  I’ve got nothing but circumstantial evidence to back it up. 

But do you remember way up above, where we pointed out that the MInnPost gets big bucks from the anti-gun Joyce Foundation?

Guess who else is bankrolled – to the tune of “most all of its budget” – by Joyce?

This might not be “conflict of interest” for Grow, in any actionable sense of the term. But I’d think that identifying the fact that both Doug Grow’s and Rep. Martens’ jobs are paid for, in whole or part, by a non-profit supported by liberal plutocrats that is the single major funder of anti-gun organizations might have been worth a mention. 

Again, correlation doesn’t equal causation.

But given the complete abandonment of any sense of balance or concern for fact on the part of the MinnPost in covering the Second Amendment issue – not to mention Grow’s obsequious. fawning, toenail-painting coverage of Martens and her “group” this session -  ”causation” doesn’t seem like a big stretch.

Culture Clash

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Warehouse tax snuck into law this session.  It’s been tried and repealed in other states, drives businessout of state.  Also, mining products tax makes Superior cheaper than Duluth.  Dumb.

You’d think a guy who hides his own money across the border – to take advantage of their tax laws – would understand that concept.

Joe Doakes

In all fairness, Governor Messinger Dayton might understand it.

But he’s got a DFL legislature full of people who are more used to having money laundered in-state by unions and other proxies than artfully sheltered elsewhere.

It makes their meetings difficult.

MNGOP: Relax And Let The Experts Do Your Thinking For You!

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MPR’s Daily Current – whose Keri Miller is as reliable a PR flak as the DFL has – talked about the upcoming Governor’s race – with a panel of media libs:

After the Friday Roundtable taping wrapped up, Kerri threw one more question to our guests off the air: “Who is emerging as a GOP candidate to challenge Dayton?”

Patricia Lopez: “I don’t even know if that name is out there yet.”

Steve Perry: “The name I keep hearing in sort of an ‘if only’ vein from Republicans is Julie Rosen.”

Lopez: “She has not said ‘no’ and [I heard her give] what sure sounded like a stump speech. She just dropped by the office and I thought, ‘That sure sounded like a stump speech.’”

Brian Bakst: “She would be headed for a primary no matter what, though, because that stadium legislation that she co-sponsored would be a non-sale within the convention.”

Rosen’s generally good, with a few unfortunate traits, most notably her penchant for being among the first to work “across the aisle” – an inevitable last resort when you’re in the minority…

…which she was not, back in 2012, she led a small group of Republicans to ingratiate themselves with Helga Braid Nation without bothering to get any spending concessions from the Governor.

Of course, working with the DFL sans quid pro quo is one of the key criteria on getting the media to accept you…

…temporarily.

I direct you to Berg’s Eleventh Law (“The conservative liberals “respect” for their “conservative principles” will the the one that has the least chance of ever getting elected.”) and its various corollaries, especially the McCain Corollary (“If that respected conservative ever develops a chance of getting elected, that “respect” will turn to blind unreasoning hatred overnight”). You may be certain that if Keri Miller and Patricia Lopez are talking up Julie Rosen, that the Alliance for a Better Minnesota has a campaign in the pocket against her, all ready to go.

Perhaps “Julie Rosen: Stadiums for the 1%”.

Lopez – the editor of that notable bellwether for conservatives, the Strib - notes:

Lopez: “Think about how hard it would be for Dayton to run against a moderate, Republican woman. Yikes.”

I’m not saying Rosen might not be an excellent candidate. I’m willing to be persuaded. Seriously.

But the fact that a round table of de facto DFL apparatchiks – Steve Perry, for Stu’s sake – are mutedly humming her praises can’t be a good thing, right off the bat.

The Six Degrees Of Neil Young

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve discovered “IHeartRadio”‘s music stations feature; you enter an artist, set a lev of familiarity (so the system plays song by artists more or less closely stylistically related to your selected artist), and let the music roll.

And it’s cool. Seriously.

But every artist I entered – Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Marah, Richard Thompson, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Sam and Dave – all led, within half a dozen songs, to one Neil Young song or another.

Neil Young is the number 42 of pop music (in the Douglass Adams rather than Jackie Robinson senses of the word. Er, number).

Collin-oscopy

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Rumors from some reliable-enough sources indicate 400-term DFL 7th District Representive Collin Peterson may retire by the end of this term.

This would give the GOP an opportunity for a big flip in a part of the state that, like the Dakotas, has sent farm-pork-mongering DFLers to Washington for decades, but otherwise is solidly red.  The 7th – which is, politically, a suburb of North Dakota anyway – would very likely elect a Republican, if a good one shows up and has a functional party behind ‘em.

So, 7th CD readers (and, let’s be honest, everyone else); who do you see running for the House in CD7 in 2014?

The Real Question

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Mark Ritchie, two-term Secretary of State and George Soros beneficiary, will be leaving the Secretary of State’s office after two terms.

His main accomplishments:  bringing electoral reform to three grossly-underserved communities: the Fictional-Americans, Duplicate-Americans and Deceased-Americans.

They will no doubt miss him.