{"id":14663,"date":"2010-10-26T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=14663"},"modified":"2014-10-02T10:19:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T15:19:38","slug":"hatch-and-swanson-peas-in-an-authoritarian-pod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=14663","title":{"rendered":"Hatch And Swanson: Peas In An Authoritarian Pod"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t watched Chris Barden – GOP candidate for Attorney General – and his indictment of Attorney General Swanson and the man who pretty much pulls her strings, Mike Hatch, watch this:<\/p>\n

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The stuff about using staff to file grandstanding lawsuits that publicized his office but played fast and loose with the law?\u00a0 We’ve run into this on this blog before; back in 2003, I wrote a five part series on one of these suits, on Hatch’s watch, against “American Bankers”, a Florida company that ran afoul of state regulators.\u00a0 It was one of Hatch’s sleazier moments – and that of the media, too.<\/p>\n

Part 1 <\/a>– During the closing days of the Ventura Administration, the state Commerce Department, under Jim Bernstein, a former DFLer and radical anti-business commissioner, reaches a settlement as part of a multi-state action.\u00a0 And then American Bankers backs out.<\/p>\n

Part 2 <\/a>– American Bankers sends a check to the Minnesota GOP – coordinated by a DFL rainmaker with a long, cordial relationship with Hatch – which was illegal at the time.\u00a0 An automatic “thank you” letter goes out…<\/p>\n

Part 3 <\/a>– …which Hatch uses to ambush Pawlenty’s commerce commissioner, to push for an illegal diversion of settlement money to a Hatch-controlled charity.<\/p>\n

Part 4 <\/a>– Hatch springs one of his pet reporters on the MNGOP, creates a canned controversy.<\/p>\n

Part 5 <\/a>– The lack of media attention to the unravelling of Hatch’s story, back in 2003.<\/p>\n

Watch the video.\u00a0 Read the five part report.<\/p>\n

Tell a neighbor; Lori Swanson’s gotta go.<\/p>\n

Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t watched Chris Barden – GOP candidate for Attorney General – and his indictment of Attorney General Swanson and the man who pretty much pulls her strings, Mike Hatch, watch this: The stuff about using staff to file grandstanding lawsuits that publicized his office but played fast and loose with the law?\u00a0 We’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,20,2],"tags":[312],"class_list":["post-14663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-democrats","category-minnesota-politics","tag-mngov-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14663","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=14663"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14666,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14663\/revisions\/14666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}