[An AFSCME spokesperson] revealed the caller\u2019s identity, and states that his business is on record as a vendor for the state of Minnesota; she shared documentation of that fact with this site. The Minnesota Independent\u2019s call to the individual was not returned, so we\u2019ll refrain from revealing his or her identity at this time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But, all of that aside, Birkey will <\/em>reveal [I’ll add emphasis] that…:<\/p>\nA local chapter of AFSCME, the national public workers\u2019 union, says it received three expletive-laced phone messages from a person claiming to be a Tea Party member<\/strong> in response to the union\u2019s new ad urging support for fair taxation in Minnesota.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWow.\u00a0 That’s a pretty damning conclusion!\u00a0 And on what does Birkey base this?<\/p>\n
[AFSCME’s flak] forwarded audio of the call along with the identity of a person she says the calls were tracked to.\u00a0 That individual, a local business owner, she says \u201cclaims to be an organizer of the Tea Party protest at the State Capitol tomorrow<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSo let’s summarize; Andy Birkey, apparently at the assurance of a PR flak from a group that has a vested interest in attacking the Tea Party, not only claims on the eve of the national Tea Party protests that an “organizer” (we know this because he claimed <\/em>it on his phone message!)\u00a0is threatening a local union (???), to the point where he headlined his story “TEA PARTY SUPPORTER THREATENS AFSCME OFFICE<\/strong>“…<\/p>\n…but won’t say who it is, so that we Tea Partiers can find out who has allegedly so sullied the honor of our movement?<\/p>\n
Hmmm.\u00a0 The hell you say.<\/p>\n
And what exactly was <\/em>the “threat?”<\/p>\n\u201cHey you [expletive] piece of [expletive]. Your days are [expletive] numbered sucking at the public tit. This [expletive] is over. I saw that [expletive] \u2018Tax the Rich\u2019 ad again. We don\u2019t you come and visit tomorrow at the [expletive] little party we\u2019re going to have on the 15th at the capitol. Why don\u2019t you show up there with your [expletive] union signs. That\u2019d be just [expletive] wonderful. Come you you gutless [expletive] wonders, show up!\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nUm, what’s the threat?\u00a0\u00a0I get it, profanity is unpleasant\u00a0and all, but the only “threat” seems to be\u00a0sympathy for cutting\u00a0government jobs, and an acid invitation to come to the Tea Party with union signs to see what people thought of ’em.<\/p>\n
As to the AFSCME flak?\u00a0 Well, the union can be happy they’re getting their money’s worth; she’s certainly on message…:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tea party has a history of inciting angry mobs<\/strong>, so given that, we filed the report\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI’d ask her to provide examples of “angry mobs”, but I’m sure she’ll be on a contractual coffee break when I call…<\/p>\n
I’ll be calling the AFSCME office for clarification.\u00a0 Let’s see if that gets reported as a “threat”, too.<\/p>\n
UPDATE:\u00a0 Welcome, Politics in Minnesota readers.\u00a0 I update this story in this piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Someone left some naughty messages at the local AFSCME headquarters. Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “Independent” notes that AFSCME and the police know who it is, but…: [An AFSCME spokesperson] revealed the caller\u2019s identity, and states that his business is on record as a vendor for the state of Minnesota; she shared documentation of that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slander-files"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10096"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10098,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10096\/revisions\/10098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}