Why were the DFL’s array of sock-puppets out in such force writing about the GOP convention?<\/p>\n
To draw attention away from their own, up in Duluth.<\/p>\n
First came reports that the DFL were denying media credentials to reporters from newspapers that had criticized Dayton<\/a>.<\/p>\n Which is one way of silencing dissent.<\/p>\n Another way to silence dissent?\u00a0 Agree not to talk about the inconvenient truth – that the DFL is intensely split on\u00a0 mining.<\/p>\n That’s what the DFL did at their convention in Duluth over the weekend; looked at the upcoming bloodletting between their ultra-liberal, metro-area base – which is as dogmatic a pack of environmentalists as you will find in Democrat politics – and the Iron Range.<\/p>\n The Range, of course, is Minnesota’s red-headed economic stepchild; an area of the state whose economy has been draggy since the demise of the US steel industry forty years ago.<\/p>\n Of course, there is an immense wealth of minerals under the ground in Northern Minnesota, putting thousands of underemployed miners back to work, and creating jobs for many, many thousands more in the many areas that support mining – everything from mine equipment maintenance to truck driving to convenience stores catering to people going to and from work.<\/p>\n But currently – thanks to DFL-authored environmental rules and business regulations – it is literally better business to load ore-rich rock into trains and ship it to North Dakota <\/a>than to build a processing plant in Minnesota.<\/p>\n So while the DFL had only one significant endorsement battle – to pick a Secretary of State candidate – the battle lines were in fact forming to duke out the battle between blue-collar Rangers and the businesses what want to hire them on the one side, and plutocrat Metro-area environmentalists (including Alita Messinger, who bankrolls Minnesota’s environmentalist messaging as completely as she controls the DFL’s).<\/p>\n