If you are a K-12 student, you will see a $230 million cut in funding for your schools because Dayton plans to eliminate testing.

Now, I personally am ambivalent about testing as a goal, an end in and of itself, as happens all too often in our current educational system.

But like it or not, the Fed requires this testing to make sure students are actually learning things at school – a putative goal of education, somewhere down there under ” prevent union teacher layoffs” even in the Minnesota Federation of Teachers’ canon of goals.

A state that doesn’t have an accountability system in place will not receive federal funding.

Now, debate if you will the wisdom of focusing on testing.  I certainly do.

But remember – in the last week in August, the DFL was spitting tacks because Tim Pawlenty “left federal money on the table” for various “health aid” programs.

Now, they’re proposing leaving more federal money on the table – and not a word.

Why?

Other than the fact that that money would hold Education Minnesota accountable for its ongoing failure, I mean?

Coming up at 9AM:  The Incredible Do-It-All Commissioners!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

If you are one of the 200,000 Minnesotans with a license from the Minnesota Department of Commerce, prepare for a huge fee increase.

Dayton proposes funding the Commerce Department entirely by fees exacted from those “industries.”

Are you a real estate agent? Reeling from the collapse of the houseing market are you?  Tough rocks, Audrey; your license to do business is going up.

Are you an Appraiser?  Your kids are wearing last years’ shoes, and you’re trying to figure out your umpteenth way to fix spaghetti so the kids don’t twig to the fact you’ve been stretching a two-pound box of noodles, since nobody’s buying houses since the Obama Stimulus ceased stimulating?  Pony up, cowboy.

Youre an Insurance agent? Well, your customers may be in good hands – but unless you cough up a pile of extra money, they’ll be someone else’s hands.

Stock broker?  Notary?  Barber? The list goes on and on.  Basically, if you’re any kind of professional whose franchise to do business depends on a state license, you’re going to be paying more – even if you’re making less.

Coming up at 8AM:  No Child Left Paid-For!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

If you’re a teacher who happens to get sick in the first year of the Dayton/ Education Minnesota Health Insurance Pool, good luck making a claim.

The new Health Insurance Pool that Dayton wants to start for Education Minnesota’s health insurance is, curiously, exempt from the startup balance requirements that affect every other insurance plan that operates in Minnesota.  The plan could literally go bankrupt in the first year.

In the private market, this would be…well, illegal, since regular insurance plans need to have startup reserves.  Since this is a Teachers Union things, it’d basically give Dayton the grounds for another deficit-boosting state bailout.

Meaning more spending.

Meaning more taxes.

Assuming the legislature in a post-Tea-Party, mid-Obamadescenscion era would pony up.

Sound good, teachers?

Coming up at 7AM:  Why Does Dayton Hate Small Business People?

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

Today is Labor Day – the day when Union members pat themselves on the back for another year of doing their jobs and getting paid for it, and when the rest of us hit the picnic grounds and ponder buying weatherstripping.

And this year, the time when the political season starts to reach out to people who aren’t wonks, party hacks and political junkies.

Tomorrow on Shot In The Dark, I plan on spending pretty much the entire day focusing on the Dayton Dustbowl.

How badly are Dayton’s budget cuts going to hamper business?

How many (private sector) jobs are they going to destroy?

How much otherwise-useful money are they going to take out of the economy?

How short will they fall at the goal of “closing the deficit?”

How far down will Dayton have to push the definition of “the rich” to actually accomplish his putative goal of “closing the deficit?”

What kind of a Hungarian Clusterhug is Dayton going to present to our next Legislature, if – heaven forfend – he’s elected to office?

Coming tomorrow on Shot In The Dark.

All.  Day.  Long.

The Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute “Poligraph”feature did provide some thorough fact checking on Dayton’s income tax proposals and found they came up short on revenue.

The report called Dayton’s plan to raise $4 billion from raising taxes “wishful thinking”; the plan doesn’t account for the fact that people with money will likely change their behavior to pay less taxes.  People react in their own best interests, generally; it’s human nature.  Even DFLers.

That leads, of course, to an ever-expanding game of fiscal cat and mouse; the “rich” – all those cops and teachers and pharmacists and entrepreneurs and mid-level business analysts – work harder and harder to shift money out of taxable status, which causes less revenue to come in, which further drops the revenue projections, which requires the state to further lower the definition of “rich”.

It was, of course, beyond the MPR/HHHI scope to calculate exactly how short the projections will actually fall.  The fact is, Dayton himself thinks one needs a “supercomputer” to figure it out; he hasn’t figured it out either.

Dayton has changed the rhetoric on his tax plan and now claims the $130,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples was adjusted income, not gross income.

I’m being charitable when I say “change”, by the way – on this blog, I busted Dayton a few weeks back, contradicting his own website, in a piece aptly entitled “Blowing Sunshine Up Minnesota’s Skirt”.

All those fact checkers who’ll be queuing up to go over Tom Emmer plan, which should start coming out in the next week or so, would never allow this type of flip flop (or fumble? We may never know!) to go unnoticed. Why hasn’t Dayton added this important clarification to the budget plan on his website? (PDF file)

And here’s a question: I’m presuming Dayton’s assumptions about revenues were based on the original statement – that it was based on gross income, rather than adjusted income.  How does that change that $4 billion figure that Dayton claims the state will extract from those “rich” cops, nurses, programmers, pharmacists, entrepreneurs…

…and all the other families who have the misfortune to have worked hard and earned a decent living?

If you are an above average nurse and police officer, or a couple of modestly-successful project managers, or an airline mechanic and a school teacher, or a business analyst and a modestly-successful sanitation equipment salesman, or whatever combination of hard-working Minnesotans you can imagine that are making a combined $150,000 a year, your taxes are going up.

We use the term “average” advisedly;  when Margaret Anderson Kelliher asked Mark Dayton why he wanted to raise taxes on a nurse and police officer, Dayton replied that the average nurse and police officer do not make enough money to reach his definition of “rich.”

So above average nurses and cops and anyone else making $130,000 per year – you need to pay your “fair share” to the government.

And by “Fair Share”, that means when you and your spouse – or you alone, if you’re a fairly successful computer programmer or project manager or small-but-hardworking intrepreneur, or a cop that works lots of overtime and security gigs, or a nurse that picks up a bunch of extra hourly shifts – are going to take a big, nasty hit when you creep above that $130K income line.

Whichever one it is.

And that’s on top of all the nasty hits you’re going to get after January 1 from the Feds.

So keep plugging away, Minnesota.   I’m sure the state will appreciate all that hard work.

Almost eighty years ago, the Great Plains – where I was born, a generation later – were pummeled by back-to-back catastrophes.  The first one, the Great Depression, was manmade – a deflating credit bubble whose effects were exacerbated by government intervention in trade (the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which indirectly crippled farm exports) and the market (the entire New Deal, whose price controls had unintended consequences that rippled through ag markets for generations, as well as land management practices that exacerbated the later Dust Bowl) that kept the Depression going long after it would have healed itself after 1929.

The second was natural – an epic drought.  Either would have been bad enough – and either would have been bearable on its own.  Together, the two sets of circumstances – an unavoidable natural disaster and an avoidable man-made one – combined to create an epic human cataclysm, perhaps the worst in American history other than the Civil War.

Minnesota doesn’t face that exact level of gravity today – but the idea is the same.  Our state faces an epic disaster that’s out of our state government’s direct control – the Great Recession, in whatever form it eventually takes.

And we face the “plan” from one of our candidates for Governor – a man-made disaster that, combined with unavoidable circumstances, will be an epic disaster for Minnesota’s economy.

The Mark Dayton budget plan will, for the Minnesota economy, usher in an epic economic Dust Bowl.

Unlike the Dust Bowl of Steinbeck novels and Guthrie songs, California is sending the problem rather than providing a destination.  The Mark Dayton budget will institutionalize all of the same problems that are gutting the California economy – and that of Greece – right before our eyes.

The media is asking no questions of Mark Dayton about his budget; they’re saving all their energy, apparently, for Emmer’s plan, coming out over the next few weeks.

So it’s up to us.

Starting tomorrow – a long, involved series on Mark Dayton’s “Minnesota Dust Bowl” plan.  I’ll be doing what the media won’t; dissecting the Dayton plan, point by point, piece by piece, and spelling out its impact on you, the citizen.

Load granny on the back of the truck; Shot In The Dark is where all us Okies will be going.

I have a quick question for the Twin Cities’ leftyblog buildup.

Since gay marriage has emerged, at least for the DFL, as the most important issue in the gubernatorial election – at least as re the perceived record of the GOP’s candidate – I think it’s only fair to ask “why has the DFL been such an utter waste of time when it comes to passing gay marriage?”  If there really is an outcry for gay marriage, then why didn’t the DFL-controlled legislature use their four years of absolute legislative hegemony to push the issue?

Because if there genuinely is popular support for a measure  then there is no such thing as a “wasted vote”.

Here’s how it works; Representative A (DFL – Spike Lake) brings up a gay marriage bill.  Representative B (GOP – Mud Lake) bottles it up in committee and it dies.  DFL candidate C runs for Represenative B’s job, and uses the vote to stir up popular anger at Mr. B, who is turned out of office by the voters who are demanding gay marriage.

In the next session, Representative A and C and fifty other DFLers (and GOPers, scared by the demise of Representative B) pass the bill through the House , and send it to the Senate.  There, Senator D (GOP – Ham Prairie) bottles the bill up in committee.  That fall, GOP candidate E runs against Senator D in the primary, capitalizing on the growing grass-roots realization that gay marriage is what the people want, and gets the endorsement, and wins the vote in Ham Prairie, a reliably GOP district that, like all Minnesotans, really do support gay marriage.

The next session, the House and Senate both pass gay marriage bills.  They are carried to Governor F.  Ms. F vetoes the bill.  In the following gubernatorial election, the popular support for gay marriage sends Governor F. packing; pro-gay marriage former state insurance commissioner G is elected governor. And in his first session, when presented with a gay marriage bill, he signs it, just as he promised in the keynote to his winning campaign.

——–

Is the example above a fanciful hypothetical?  Yes and no.  It was, more or less, how “Concealed Carry” was passed in Minnesota. Pat Pariseau and Linda Boudreaux proposed “Shall Issue” legislation for four or five different sessions (if I remember correctly, and I may well not) before the votes were there to get the victory in 2003.  It wasn’t because they thought they could win every single time – in 1997, they certainly could not.  It was because they knew they wanted the issue in front of the legislature, because the process surrounding the debate would eventually win legislators over (and see to the electoral firing of legislators who opposed the popular measure). And this was in a Legislature that was not controlled by Republicans, much less conservatives.

The MNGOP’s gubernatorial candidate opposes gay marriage. So, by the way, do most Americans, in one form or another; while many support civil unions (myself included), Gay Marriage proposals keep losing in referendum after referendum.

“Why waste the votes?”, one DFL wag asked me when I brought it up once.

I dunno – because if you believe in the rightness of your cause, that’s what you do; if you believe in the democratic process and you believe that the people really do support your cause, then there is no such thing as a “wasted vote”.

The DFL knows this, because while they are fine using gay marriage as a cudgel against conservative politicians to fire up, or shore up, their base, they have spent their last four years of absolute hegemony in the Legislature pushing exactly zero gay marriage legislation to Governor Pawlenty.

“Shall issue” handgun laws survived and grew during at least seven consecutive legislative tests against nominally hostile legislatures.  Why doesn’t gay marriage get even one test in a relentlessly friendly legisature?

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.

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.

As noted last week, my pal and radio colleague Ed Morrissey made it onto the list of the top 100 conservatives the left loves to hate. Morrissey earned his #49 spot, beating out Governor Pawlenty (#86) and Ted Nugent (who cares).  Glenn Beck was the winner, naturally, with the usual suspects – Limbaugh, Rove, Hannity, Malkin, Savage – up at the top of the list (and, oddly, the not-very-conservative, liberal-friendly David Frum at 99).

But it started me to thinking:  Who are the most hated conservatives in Minnesota?  Who does the leftysphere in Minnesota detest more than anything?

Thus, it’s time for a poll.  Everyone give me up to your top ten Minnesota conservatives that Minnesota liberals love to hate, in descending order – in other words, put your “Most Hated” at #1, the tenth most hated at #10.  I’ll use your rankings to weight the results.

I want everyone to vote – conservatives, liberals, don’t cares, Tea Partiers, Libertarians, the works.  Just leave me your top ten, either in the comments or at the email address “feedbackinthedark”, which is a Yahoo dot com email address.

You have until Thursday midnight to get your votes in.  This post will likely be bumped up or reprised during the week.

It’s hard to look at the MN House of Representatives’ own wrapup of the 2010 session (WARNING:  PDF

How can the first paragraph of this press release be read as anything other than a complete and total vindication of Governor Pawlenty’s budget stance last year? 

 Despite court challenges and ceaseless partisan attacks, he held firm until the DFL itself introduced the very law that not only ratified the un-allotments but made even MORE cuts in programs intended to help poor people, the heartless bastards!

 The media is already working hard to try to slander Pawlenty’s legacy.  It’s because if more people nationwide knew the real Pawlenty story, he’d be a headache for the Democrats nationwide.

In the 2000 Presidential election, it’s entirely possible that George W. Bush was put into office by Ralph Nader, who stole just enough votes from the radical fringe of the left to make it close enough for the freakish electoral college result we got.

And it’s very likely that we dodged the spectre of “Governor Hatch” because mushy liberal Dean Barkley squatted on enough moderate-left votes to keep Governor Pawlenty in office.  Thank God.

The Dems would very much like to repay the favor.  The Indyparty candidate this year, Tom Horner, is a former Republican – in the same way that Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger were Republicans. 

Only worse. 

And while the media has been strongly hinting to undecided conservative voters that “Horner is the moderate Republican”, Derek “Chief” Brigham at Freedom Dogs has been following the Horner candidacy with a two-part series (One and Two) running down Horner’s supporters.

Hint: with his years as a “PR consultant”, it’s mostly big-government special interests, including the MN Vikings (although as the Strib noted in an editorial last weekend, we dont’ knwo for sure – Horner’s firm “Himle and Horner” won’t release a client list), and big-government “Republicans” like Carlson.  And the DFL, naturally. 

Which means Horner is not only no more “conservative” or “fiscally responsible” than the most crack-whore-with-a-stolen-Gold-cardish DFLer, it also means Horner is a raft of conflicts of interests.

“But wait a minute, Berg – Emmer’s a lawyer!  He might have represented people who might give him a conflict of interest if he’s elected!”   Well, no – there are fairly strict rules for lawyers when it comes to conflict of interest; the rules are a lot less clear-cut for PR flaks. 

And it doesn’t matter.  Horner will get three percent of the vote, and the Independence Party will likely lose major-party status this year.  The DFL and Media’s (ptr) only interest in the subject is to make sure that those three percent come more from Emmer than from one of the Three Stooges.

Because they’ll need all the help they can get.

In the first three parts of this series, I showed that the example of government fiscal starvation Jeff Rosenberg used in his plaintive plea for more Local Government Aid (LGA) – Brainerd shutting off some of its streetlights – was not borne out by the numbers.  I also showed that the DFL’s claim that cities are raising property taxes to make up for LGA cuts isn’t even half the truth – indeed, it’s more like 1/7th the truth, as property tax levy increases have outstripped LGA cuts by a factor of 7.5 to 1  – and that’s after Governor Pawlenty’s “unallotment”, without which the disparity would have been more like 16 to 1.

On Tuesday, we’ll be looking at LGA in Greater Minnesota – on the many, many cities that get no LGA, and on one city that receives it, but has run its fiscal shop much more responsibly than the DFL-clogged Big Three cities.

That’s next week.

For today, though, I just want to answer some questions.

A couple of people, on blogs and in the comment sections, sniffed “but you’re not controlling for inflation”, with one suggesting if I didn’t use constant dollars the whole exercise was moot. 

Inflation is a factor, and as I noted people need to take it into account when considering the numbers. 

But as I noted the other day, property tax levies have risen 59% in the past eight years.   Even with the cuts to LGA, the total amount of LGA plus levies has risen 34%. 

Inflation during the same period was 21.94%.

“But the government inflation rate is higher!” 

Well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?  Government is more expensive than most things – mostly due to labor.  The median government job pays much better than the median private sector job; add in benefits, and the fact that government is the most-unionized sector of the economy (thus immune to the salary contraction that we in the private sector have dealt with in recent years. and “government inflation is higher” is a key reason to cut, not raise, the amount we spend on them.

And it brings up a key question that ties into liberals and conservatives’ views on what government really is: should government be immune to hard times in the private sector?  More to the point – should the taxpayer be required to keep government immune at all costs, when they themselves are suffering in a way that government employees are not?

This will be an especially important question next year, when the current “recovery” grinds to a halt under the avalanche of new Obama administration taxes; indeed, stagnancy or a double-dip recession will likely be tied directly to the growth and voracity of government.

So not only is the complaint about inflation numbers wrong, but it completely avoids the real point; government should not be immune to hard times in the rest of the economy.  Government is not a family member that we are obligated to support; it is at best an employee.  Not much different than the millions that are getting laid off, although the worst government can expect is that they’ll get a pay cut, and it’ll be temporary, and that when things do turn around (when the grownups are in control again), they’ll bounce back just fine.

More next week.

There are a little over five million Minnesotans. 

About 4.3 million of them live in “cities” of widely-varying sizes and government types, from plucky Montevideo up to metropolitan Minneapolis, from conservative Mound to neo-Wobbly Duluth.

These cities have a few things in common.  They levy property taxes to pay part of their municipal bills – and many of them spent much of the past forty years laundering their spending through the state via “Local Government Aid”. 

In their approach to the next election and the run-up to this November (which, for the DFL, will almost surely be as  much a matter of running against Pawlenty as anything), the DFL is banging on the ideas that…:

• cuts to Local Government Aid shredded budgets and gutted infrastructure throughout Minnesota, and
• Minnesota cities need to “pay their way”.

So let’s look at how Minnesota “pays its way”, according to data from the League of Minnesota Cities.

From 2002 to 2009,. Local Government Aid to all Minnesota cities fell 15%. 

 You might ask “what about the changes between 2002 and 2009?”  It’d be a fair question; while I am focusing on the big picture here – the gross movement during the Pawlenty Administrion, the fact is that LGA started at $564 million in 2002, dropped to $464 million in 2003, dipped into the $430-million range through ’05, and held in the $480-millions until 2009, when the original amount ballooned back up to $526 million, before Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment shaved it back into teh $481 million range, roughly where it’d been throughout his second term.

But check out the second line – the total property tax levies from all cities.  In every year of the Pawlenty Administration, they rose by at least $100 million. 

As a result, while total LGA was off 15%, or about $83 million, for the period (and maybe $3 since the start of Pawlenty’s second term, even with unallotment and the removal of the “Minnesota Value Homestead Credit” (in which the state stopped paying cities and counties back for a credit on taxes for high-value homes – which affected suburbs with high property values vastly more than the Big Three cities of Minneaoplis, St. Paul and Duluth – of which more in a bit.

Those numbers are for all cities.   And throughout Minnesota, hikes outstripped cuts by a factor of 7.5 to 1 (683 milion to 85 million), even after unallotment.

Now, let’s look at the Big Three – Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth.

Minneapolis’ population grew by 2% during the Pawlenty years – while property tax levies rose 93% to cover a post-allotment drop of 28% in LGA payments; the city’s total revenue zoomed up 35% during the Pawlenty years.  Hikes outstripped LGA cuts by almost 4 to 1.

 Saint Paul didn’t fare quite as well; nearly doubling the property tax levy to its stagnant population  only compensated the 22% drop in LGA with an overall quarter hike in LGA/property tax revenue.  Hikes outstripped cuts by almost 3 to 1.

 Duluth’s LGA, with unallotment, dropped by one percent over the Pawlenty Administration, and supplies more of the city’s budget than the property tax levies – which rose 70% – do.  Note that while Local Government Aid was virtually unchanged even with Pawlenty’s unallotment, and the loss of MVHC revnues had little effect given the city’s depressed housing values, property taxes went from about a third of the total LGA/tax venue mix to a little less than half; the overall take rose by 15%, even though Duluth’s population shrank.

So let’s compare the state’s Big Three cities with the rest of the state.

The population of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth grew by about a percent during the Pawlenty years, while all the rest of Minnesota’s cities grew by 8% – greater than the population of Saint Paul.  The Big Three cities’ state of the state’s population shrank by 1.2%, to just under 18% – less than one in five Minnesotans:

 But how do the finances break out?

The big three, even with a 22% post-unallotment cut, get a third of the state’s Local Government Aid – double the population’s proportion of the revenues:

Divided up by resident, this means that residents of the Big Three get, even after the unallotment cuts, two and a half times as much Local Government Aid per-capita than the rest of the state’s cities.

And the Big Three’s property tax revenue hikes – 93%,  almost $164 million over the Pawlenty years – outstripped their net LGA cuts (almost $48 million) by 3.4 to 1. 

What does this mean?

The Hikes Beat The Cuts: While the DFL caterwauls endlessly about the damage the cuts in LGA did, the hikes in property taxes statewide outstripped the LGA cuts by 7.5 to 1.   Without unallotment, that would have been closer to 16 to 1.  Bear in mind that this is money that goes to government – not merely to maintain it but to grow it – as opposed to anything useful, like growing our private sector or putting your kids through college.

Pay Your Own Way?  While Local Government Aid was originally intended to subsidize smaller, poorer governments in outstate Minnesota, so that their schools and infrastructures could compete with those of the once-wealthy Twin Cities, that’s been totally stood on its head during the past generation.  Minneaopolis, Saint Paul and Duluth get 2.5 times as much Local Government Aid per capita than the state’s smaller cities.

Why?

Because the Big Three cities are basket cases after generations of unfettered DFL control.

The DFL would have you believe there’s no alternative.

We’ll look into that on Monday.

I wrote about it yesterday:  the regional left wants to make Governor Pawlenty’s cuts to the “Local Government Aid” program a major issue in the campaign.

If there is any justice – and if Minnesotans can read numbers – it should backfire badly on the DFL.

I wrote yesterday about a piece in Twin Cities leftyblog MNPublius written by Jeff Rosenberg, which led:

As Tim Pawlenty tries to walk into the sunset, he’s got one small problem: He’s left Minnesotans a complete mess.

He went on to quote heavily from a WCCO TV report that showed how grievously cities around Minnesota are suffering because of Governor Pawlenty’s cuts to LGA.

We’ll address the “cuts” later in this series. 

———-

But for today, let’s just talk history. 

“Local Government Aid” was a scheme hatched in the late sixties and early seventies.  There are really two ways to look at it:

“Political Welfare” – Just as “welfare” in its purest, most generally-accepted form seeks to put a safety net over the abyss of poverty, and “corporate welfare” tries to help businesses create jobs in communities that might not otherwise exist (often for good reason), LGA started out as welfare for cities; the state’s taxpayers would subsidize the less well-off parts of the state by redistributing wealth from the parts of the state that were prospering.  At that time, of course, it was the wealthy metro area  subsidizing relatively poor outstate Minnesota.  

But forty years of DFL mismanagement have turned the major cities – Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth into fiscal basket cases; outstate Minnesota is holding its own; the suburbs, especially the Twin Cities’ booming southern and western ‘burbs, are absolutely booming.

And like the original intentions of the personal and corporate welfare systems, Minnesota’s political welfare system, Local Government Aid, has been perverted far outside its original scope.

Which means LGA really more closely resembles…

Money Laundering: Originally intended to give small, poor outstate governments and schools a hand, it now subsidizes DFL-dominated city governments to a vastly disproportionate degree.  And it allows those city governments to diffuse the accountability for their own wasteful, featherbedded spending.

Look at it this way:  A city spends 10 million dollars.  They want to spend fifteen million dollars.  What do you suppose is going to be an easier pill to shove down the city’s taxpayers’ throats?

• A 50% hike in property taxes?
• No change in property taxes, and a five million dollar subsidy gotten from the state’s three million taxpayers?

Because when you’re a politician, the best kind of accountability is the kind you fob off on someione else.

And while the DFL caterwauls about the losses that LGA cuts have supposedly inflicted on the cities, the numbers show a very, very different story;  LGA cuts have been far outstripped by property tax hikes.

More, including numbers – lots and lots of numbers – tomorrow.

The Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) sent Minnesota’s government into a tizzy a few weeks ago when they tossed Governor Pawlenty’ s unallotment – his legal line-item veto – of  billions in spending in the previous budget.

Via NewsQ, Senator Julianne Ortman says the SCOM swerved into activism in throwing out the unallotment – and the decision was based on politics:

In the courts’ analysis, and to justify their preferred result, they reasoned that the language of the [unallotment] statute was ambiguous. They implied a condition into the statute that didn’t exist, holding that unallotment may only be used after the Legislature and governor have already adopted a balanced budget.

Apparently Chief Justice Magnuson’s majority believed its decision would resolve the current disagreement between the governor and Legislature, but it had no such result. The 70-year-old statute was the agreed-upon method between Minnesota’s executive and legislative branches for resolving an impasse like the one we have just seen: the House and Senate DFL leadership could garner enough votes to pass a revenue-raising bill, but they could not muster enough votes to override the governor’s veto. The unallotment statute was one tool available for breaking an impasse — one that many disagreed with in these circumstances, to be sure, but a tool we cannot live without.

Members of Minnesota’s judicial branch should never have inserted their views into the issues between the political branches. These judges over-reached their own constitutional authority, which is restricted by the Separation of Powers Clause, Article III, Section 1, which provides that no branch can usurp or diminish the role of another branch.

Our system is such that there  could be consequences…:

If his actions were heavy-handed or overly political, voters in the next election could hold accountable those who supported his actions. If voters agreed, as I did, that the governor’s use of unallotment was absolutely necessary in response to our state’s historic economic and financial crisis, then they could act accordingly in 2010. Instead, the court got political.

Which would involve people – and the media – paying attention to what the SCOM does.

I got the strangest sensation last week.  I haven’t had this sensation in the longest time.  Maybe a brief flash in 2000, but it wasn’t quite the same thing.

The DFL realizes that they’ve got nothing.

The Strib referenced Ben Smith in Politico this morning, saying that…:

Pawlenty appears to have run the table on the Democratic majorities in both of the houses of the legislature, forcing them to drop plans for new surcharges and scrap their top priority, an expansion of federal and state-funded health care for some of the state’s poor. They also enacted spending cuts that a court recently ruled Pawlenty could not make himself.

He will complete his two-term tenure at the end of this year having fulfilled his pledge not to raise taxes, with his approval ratings in positive territory, and having largely avoided the pragmatic compromises that often bedevil governors in polarized party primaries. His success gives him the accomplishments to match his conservative rhetoric, and set a high bar for other ambitious governors facing budget crises of their own in this lean year.

“We have some pretty clear values and principles in mind that we adhere to and when it relates to those core values and principles we don’t compromise on,” Pawlenty told POLITICO in an interview Monday after what he said was two hours of sleep on each of the two previous nights. “When it comes to issues around the role of government taxes and amounts of spending and other things, those are core values and principles by which we set our compass, and we stay strongly on that course and we battle.”

It’s a good piece.  You should read the whole thing. 

Perhaps the crux is right here; Pawlenty seems to have aversion-trained the DFL:

“Democrats have always known that a tax increase means a veto. As a result, there has been a grudging acceptance among Democrats that any package negotiated with the governor will not include tax increases,” Nelson said.

And this put the last piece into the (possibly completely-spurious) puzzle.  Maybe it’s just me, of course – but over the course of the past few weeks, it feels as if the Minnesota DFL has run out of gas.  They seem tired, like a boxer that’s gone a few rounds too many – as, in the legislature, they have, squandering four straight legislatures of prohibitive majorities but getting turned back by Governor Pawlenty at every juncture.

And if you’re a DFLer, after having beaten your head against a wall for four different sessions, culminating in agreeing to spending cuts that the Minnesota Supreme Court had just sent back from unallotment – snatchign political defeat from the jaws of a dubious legal victory – what do you have to look forward to?

A summer duking it out in a primary between a failed Speaker of the House, a former Senator that’s a laughingstock of the entire nation, and a former State senator who’s a pariah in his own party (not to mention Tom Horner who, ostensible former affiliations aside, is a moderate Democrat in policy terms, and who will draw away many, many more DFL than GOP votes). 

And when you pick from among those three deeply-uninspiring choices, you’ll stepping out into a hurricane; a GOP candidate not only at the head of an energized party out for four years of payback, but well-sited to bring in a huge chunk of the “Tea Party” vote.

It’s showing in a lot of ways; the DFL is skulking quietly away from the debris of the budget session tossing a few pro forma “Cold Omahas” and “we deserve betters” around; their big response to the Emmer campaign so far is to chant that he’s an extremist and to avoid any actual discussion comparing policy like a vampire avoiding sunlight.

Politics is cyclical; being a Democrat today must feel a bit like being a Republican (as distinct from a conservative) in, say, 2006; out of energy, out of ideas, needing a huge intellectual jumpstart.  Oh, they’ll pull something together for the campaign, but you can practically feel the fatigue.

 It won’t last forever, of course.

Not that we can’t try.

A political consultant’s main job, if you think about it, is to try to convince as many people as possible that a crap sandwich is really made out of paté and bread.

We’ll come back to that.

The weekend’s big brouhaha in re the Minnesota state budget was over the proposal to dump low-income Minnesotans from our own state system into Obamcare, so that Minnesota could cover more able-bodies single adults, among many other budgetary issues.

Pawlenty held tough.

So, as a matter of fact, did GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer (with emphasis added by me):

First of all, we should be grateful to Governor Pawlenty for once again protecting Minnesota families and businesses from tax increases. Economic recovery in Minnesota will come faster because we had the strength to hold the line on taxes.

But any recovery will be stopped in its tracks if the next governor “opts in” to Obamacare early by enrolling thousands of Minnesotans onto the federal health care roll at irresponsibly high costs, ignoring Minnesota’s nation-leading reforms in health care delivery.

With this deal, the next governor will have that power. I am announcing today I will not use it if elected this November. I also challenge my opponents (including Speaker Kelliher, who pushed for this power in closed-door negotiations) to tell Minnesotans where they stand on this issue immediately.

Emmer, in fact, voted “no” on this shift.

Now, let’s return to that opening thought about political consultants.

Tom Horner, the former “Republican” consultant, is running for governor under the “Independence” Ventura Party banner.  He released this statement:

The budget deal negotiated by the Legislature and Governor Pawlenty is a reflection of Tom Emmer’s Minnesota with the DFL leadership’s seal of approval…Instead of facing up to the hard choices, legislators have created a budget deficit that will be as much as $9 billion in the first year of the new governor’s term. 

In other words, “It’s paté!”.

Seriously – while the DFL is chanting “Horner is going to take votes away from Republicans”, read this…:

Minnesota needs a goverrnor who is willing to make the hard choices to honestly balance the budget and invest in job creation, education and innovation, even if that means the next governor only serves one term. That’s the commitment I’m making. Emmer and Kelliher have made it clear that their political futures are more important than Minnesota’s economic future.Could Minnesota’s current budget have been balanced honestly and without gimmicks? Absolutely, but the process had to start at the beginning of this legislative session, not in the 11th hour. A balanced budget would include revenue from broadening the sales tax base; repealing some of the $11 billion in tax expenditures that go mainly to the wealthy; and, increasing the tobacco tax. A Racino would raise additional dollars while giving Minnesotans who gamble the security of casinos that are publicly regulated.

…and show me a Republican who actually belongs in the party – someone who favors limited government, prosperity, low taxes – who would vote for any of this…

…paté?

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I follow from 1-3PM Central.  Today we’ll be interviewing Governor Pawlenty in the 1PM hour, and GOP-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer in the second hour.   Tune in pronto!
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

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

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

The DFL on Monday voted for an epic tax hike (disguised, per usual, as negotiation) in the middle of an epic recession/depression.

The answer – the real answer, anyway – is to toss every single DFLer responsible for this vote out this November.

My friend and longtime radio colleague King Banaian is trying to do just that up in House District 15B in Saint Cloud, against Larry “Haw” Haws.   King responds to his opponent’s vote for the tax hike (emphasis added):

“Last night my opponent voted to increase taxes on small businesses and what he considers wealthy Minnesotans,” Banaian said. “The last Economic Update from the Finance Department cited consumer confidence and sentiment being ‘mired’ at low levels and ‘lingering employment concerns, slow wage growth, and tight credit are likely to inhibit household spending until 2011.’ Even if you believe Minnesotans don’t pay enough, this is a terrible time to raise taxes.”

“But we do pay enough. The DFL bill that Rep. Haws voted for would give Minnesota the 4th highest marginal tax rate in the country on incomes of $200,000. Higher rates in California have done nothing to cure their budget problems. Why does Larry Haws think this is a good example to emulate?”

“The answer to every DFL problem is to look at small businesses as an ATM from which they can cover their need for more money. They have enough; the real need in Minnesota is to reduce spending, not raise taxes. Rep. Haws had the opportunity to balance the budget by ratifying Governor Pawlenty’s spending reductions but voted against that. When I get to St. Paul, we will set priorities that do not ask already-generous Minnesotans for more,” Banaian concluded.

Or as another conservative candidate might say, we need to stick the budget in a vise and “drill baby, drill”‘.

I’ll await word from the Strib on exactly how King’s position is “extreme”.

(Via Gary @ LFR)

I peeled this bit out of my liveblog, since I think it’s worth a discussion on its own.

One of the tempests in the teapot last night; a group of “liberty” members of the party were tweeting merrily away that Norm Coleman and that noted moderate Vin Weber were making phone calls on behalf of Tom Emmer.  Now, among the purist/libertarian wing of the party, Norm (and Pawlenty, for that matter) are anathema, because they’re just not pure enough.

Of course, absolute purism and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee; politics means compromise.  Did Norm and Governor Pawlenty always make the right compromises?  Perhaps not – but you have to be in office to be have an imperfect record.

But here’s a question I’d like to ask (if only rhetorically) to the “Emmer’s a RINO because Norm’s calling for him crowd”; which of Norm’s objectionable policies do you believe Emmer subscribes to, merley because Norm is making calls on his behalf?

Or is this just the most ofay attempt at guilt by association – policy by association, really – that I’ve ever seen?

Feel free to leave an answer in the comments.

4:58 – Seifert announced his retirement.  I say he runs for CD7 if Byberg doesn’t win.  I think it’s a swell idea.

4:55 – I was back on the floor casting my ballot when Seifert conceded.  Incredible class act.

Emmer is on stage now – it took me that long to get back to the press pit.

He’s speaking now. Great acceptance.

Only real question – how many “angry white male” references will the press and leftyblogs snif about?

4:40 – Results in:

• One “No Endorsement”
• Three Undecided
• 22 Blank
• Seifert – 876 (43.8%)
• Emmer – 1118 (56%)

Needs 1199 to endorse.  Seating for third ballot.  Back in a flash.

4:33 – Second ballot results coming out – after Carol Molnau!

4:21 – Still waiting.  Whip count says Emmer up 2-3 votes in CD4.  We’ll see.

3:35 – Change in the report d/t computation error:  Emmer 52.6, Seifert 42.5 is the new official count.

Next ballot now.  Heading to the floor.

3:00 – First ballot results are final:  53-43 Emmer. Herwig, Haas and Davis are off the ballot (none got more than percent, by my count).    Emmer is currently 126 votes shy of the endorsement.  Fifteen minutes til the next ballot.  Bill Haas is coming back to the stage.

Haas has, as I (verbally) predicted, tossed his votes to Seifert.  All 26 of them.

Now Leslie Davis – with six votes – is on stage.  “Rivvizend stakely cash more excusiwavbay.  Yatukka wiveabengay, extortinga file cuz he cknows I’m here”.  No endorsement.

Herwig up next:  Throws his votes, also, to Seifert.  36 of them.

2:56 – Reading results.  Seifert just topped 40% as we plod thorugh the Eighth district – so we’ll definitely have a second ballot.

2:47 – They’re still reading results.  We’ve been through CDs 1,2,4,5 and 6; Emmer is up by a bit, but the 7 and 8 should  both be strong for Seifer.

2:29 – I just got back off the floor, after the usual irritating rules squabbles.  They’re reporting votes a BPOU at a time.

SITD SCOOP

Scoop here:  CD4 hasn’t reported yet, but Emmer took the 4th by 89 to 60 out of 152 allowed ballots.  That’s a better ratio than he had at the CD4 convention.

1:27 – I’m told Davis said if he’s not endorsed, we face “unparalleled misery”.  Let’s just say he’s not got the crowd wrapped around his finger.

1:17 – I’m sorry – it’s actually Leslie Davis.

1:16 – Michael Savage is onstage now.  He’s not close enough to the mike.  First Ringer; “someone didn’t take their non-drowsy pill”.  Hard to hear him.

:14 – Bill C, out on the floor, says it looks like Emmer 3:2.  Chad the Elder says he figured 60-40.  Mark Buesgens says three ballots – but then that’s his job as a campaign leader.

1:10 – Leo Pusatieri tweets “Larry Haas makes Phil Herwig look absolutely dynamic”.  Sad to say, it’s true.

12;56 – Haas on stage now.  Alone.  No organization.  Halting speech.  Gotta be tough to follow Emmer and Seifert’s shows…

Chad the Elder wonders “what makes someone carry on a campaign like this?  No chance, no support…is it ego?  Or what?”  I note that Haas has an actual track record of implementing conservative principles in government.  First Ringer – “He’s the credible fringe candidate”.

12:55 – Larry Colson says the Emmer floor demonstration says crowd feels like 55-45 Emmer.  Floor demo passion looked way in Emmer’s favor.

12:52 – Emmer floor demonstration carrying on.  I’m gonna say it looks like Tom has a slight edge.

12:50 – Emmer shoots fireworks as he leaves stage.  Good thing they didn’t play “Once Bitten Twice Shy”.

12:49 – “Say yes to lower taxes, to leave more money in the pockets of people who earn it!”

12:45 – Shouting out to Annette Meeks – “She literally wrote the book on conservative government”.

12:44 – Emmer talking now.  Kevin Ecker thinks crowd looks 55-45 Emmer.  We’ll know soon enough.

12:32:  Seifert left stage with his mass of supporters.  Emmer video running now.  Or is it Leslie Davis? No, it’s Emmer.  Trying to count the duelling crowds is difficult.

Emmer hitting on the family thing – seven kids.

Hitting on principles.

First Ringer has joined me on bloggers row.  “Vote for Emmer or the kids get it”.

Video ends with tagline – “now’s the time to be done with politicians as usual.

Brian Sullivan on stage to give the nomination.

12:15 – Browser crashes hard jus tin time for Phil Krinkie to introuce Marty Seifert.  Marty on stage now.  His organizaiton is showing, for better (boots on floor) and worse (all those frankly dumb hit pieces).   He’s hittting his rural roots hard.  Not sure if that’s a big winning tack in a year with statewide issues uniting us all.  We shall see.

12:05 -And still talking.

11:55 – Snuck away to a standup with Michele Bachmann.  She is studiously avoiding endorsing anyone.

11:45 – Phil Herwig is talking.

11:44 – Rumor has it that someone “really big” is going to introduce Emmer.  Rumor is passing around that there’ a “higher degree of security” than for, say, a congressperson.  There’s talk of Palin, but nothing is confirmed.  Pure rumor mill.

11:34 – Kolls – “Anyone ready to endorse a governor?”  Huge round of applause. Hopes up…

…but all we get is a credentials report.  Still – almost time to head back to the floor to vote.

11:05 – Governor Pawlenty is on stage now.  “Fortunate Son” is the song.  I’m waiting for some leftyblogger to mewl about the “irony” of it, understanding neither the term nor the song…

He opens by thanking the First Lady.  Drew a huge round of applause.

“Ironic that we’re meeting here just a few weeks after “tax day” – or as Democrats call it, “Christmas”.  Hammering on Dems’ spending mania.   “Bailouts – 700 billion.  Increase in deficit – 2 trillion.  Republicans elected in November – priceless”.

Notes that he’s the only governor in the US to sign concealed carry…twice.  “More people have been killed by the Hiawatha Light Rail line than concealed carry!”

Good speech to a friendly crowd; his last as governor, as he noted.

10:48 – Chip Cravaack – endorsed candidate in CD8 – talks.  He’s a former Navy helo pilot.  Dan Severson is a former F18 pilot.  Funny how the Dems have shut up about how important it was that Republicans serve in the military than in 2008, when Steve Sarvi and Ashwin Madia’s service was a dispositive sign of incontestible virtue.

10:35 – I’m back in the Press Pit.  I plan on dividing my time pretty widely about the place today; I’ll be doing some media, blogging, and occasionally sprinting back to 66B to vote – whenever we get around to it.

I had the pleasure of meeting Rep. Mark Buesgens in the walkway between the Party platform and the Press Pit.  Had a great chat with him; he’s an occasional SITD reader (thanks, Mark!), and he notes that bloggers play a vital role; “peole have been getting dumbed down for too long; blogs make people think!”.  I’m flattered.

Attorney General Lori Swanson has declined the Governor’s request to join the states sueing to stop Obamacare:

She pointed out in her letter to him that Pawlenty can always file his own friend-of-the-court brief to side with the states fighting the law.

That prompted this response from Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung: “Governor Pawlenty intends to participate in this litigation.” He refused to comment on whether the governor would file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting lawsuits filed by other states, hire his own lawyer or participate in some other way. “We are going to consider our options,” McClung said in an e-mail.

Hopefully that option includes finding someone to run for Attorney General to get the statist fossil Swanson out of there.

Yes, I said statist:

In rejecting the call for Minnesota to file a lawsuit, Swanson, in a written opinion, said Congress has wide latitude to pass laws to tax and spend and to regulate interstate commerce.

“Health care — which comprises over one-sixth of our country’s economy — substantially affects interstate commerce,” Swanson said. “The United States government has been involved for years in many aspects of health care, including Medicare and Medicaid.

“Interstate Commerce” has been the trojan horse that’s enabled the socialization and overregulation of far too much of our economies and lives, ever since FDR’s administration essentially repealed the Tenth Amendment seventy years ago.

Now we know what side Lori Swanson is on.

So we got any lawyers out there, MNGOP?