Edina hewn in two

Into two congressional districts, that is: the Third and the Fifth. By the looks of it, the northeast part of the City, which was in the Fifth in the 90s, is back there again. It looks as though Edina and St. Paul Park are the only two cities split into two congressional districts.

The new senate district is 49, and its boundaries are, again, by the looks of it, pretty close to the current ones; it got a little bigger here and there than the current 41.

Update: On Saturday the 25th of February, Keith Ellison will be at Mozza Mia in "downtown" Edina to meet his new Edina constituents. He'll be there at 1:15 PM for a little over an hour.

Reprise: Mike Dean on redistricting

I thought this might be a good time to bring the video of Mike's Dean's interview on redistricting. Here it is.

Steve Morse on environmental regulation reauthorization

On February 20, 2012, Steve Morse, the Executive Director of the Minnesota Environmental Partnership, testified before a Minnesota Senate Committee in opposition to a bill that would, among other things, abolish all environmental regulation and require that each be reauthorized by the Legislature.

After the hearing, Aaron Klemz and I did a brief interview with Mr. -- and former Minnesota Senator and Assistant DNR Commissioner -- Morse. Aaron's the interviewer; I ran the camera.

Aaron -- and maybe me, too -- will have more on this in coming days.

Ridiculous Republican bill of the day

In a further attempt to turn back the calendar to the 1950's, four Minnesota Senate Republicans introduced a bill to require a two-year waiting period for divorces if the couple has minor children.

This would be the longest divorce waiting period in the country. By the way, Nevada, with the nation's highest divorce rate has one of the longest waiting periods for divorce. Minnesota has a low divorce rate, with no waiting period for divorce.

Honestly, this bill would probably decrease marriage in Minnesota, and would do nothing to keep marriages together. It's insulting to think that a couple (especially one with children) would make a decision to divorce rashly, and that a two-year waiting period would prevent divorce.

Ladies and gentleman, this is the party of less government intervention into your lives. I am slightly heartened that it was Rep. John Kriesel (R - Cottage Grove) who brought this to the attention of folks on Twitter.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Two images

Hat tip to Chris Stinson, who first put these two images together.

From Minnesota Majority's "We Want Voter ID" website

Star Tribune editorial cartoon by Steve Sack

Not Almanac 2-20-2012

The new episode of Not Almanac is available for your listening pleasure! It includes some more bullshit from Sen. Parry, Anthony Hernandez and Rep. Drazkowski, whether legislators need a basic skills test, and legislatively self-imposed judicial activism.

If you see a moment that you think deserves to be enshrined as a bullshit moment, let us know; we'd love to include it! You can contact any of us through the Twitter accounts below.

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You can download the episode or subscribe via iTunes using this link.

Follow us on Twitter @aaronklemz, @TonyAngelo, @blogspotdog

Your Twin Cities Drinking Liberally calendar for this week

On Monday, February 20th, Drinking Liberally in Hopkins will host Greta Bergstrom as its guest speaker. Greta is the Communications Director for Take Action Minnesota, a liberal advocacy group. One of the issues before the Legislature on which Take Action is especially active is the photo voter ID amendment bill, and Greta is a great person to talk about it.

If you want to know what photo voter ID is really about and how it will potentially disenfranchise thousands and thousands of people, this would be a great meeting to attend.

Drinking Liberally Hopkins meets the third Monday of each month at 6:30 PM at the VFW Hall at 100 Shady Oak Road in, well, Hopkins. That just about half block north of Excelsior on Shady Oak, on the west side of the street. You can't miss it.

On Thursday the 23rd of February, the Minneapolis chapter of Drinking Liberally will host as our guest the newest member of the Minnesota House, Rep. Susan Allen of District 61B in south Minneapolis. Rep. Allen was elected in a special election in December. Rep. Allen is the first Native American women elected to the Minnesota House. She is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

Rep. Allen is not a stranger to the Capitol, but it will be fun to hear about her experiences there as a new legislator.

Drinking Liberally Minneapolis meets every Thursday at 6:00 PM at the 331 Club in northeast Minneapolis, 331 - 13th Avenue N.E., or one block north of Broadway on University Avenue N.E. You can't miss it, either.

The programs with Ms. Berstrom and Rep. Allen are expected to start around 7:00 PM.

Enter the pawnbroker

Fridley Pawn America, photo by author

In their ongoing celebration of the wonders of the free market, Presidents Day will be ticket scalper and pawn broker day at the Minnesota House. On the calendar for the day are two bills, one would allow pawnbrokers to charge fees for storing pawned collateral, the other would prohibit practices that frustrate ticket scalping. It's a free market double-header - what could be more American than that?

Minority Leader Paul Thissen calls SF 1268 the "Pawn America bill" for good reason. As Ron Elwood from Legal Aid pointed out in his May 2011 testimony, this bill is written to satisfy the desires of a single company, Pawn America.

The ubiquitous Pawn America commercials that show CEO Brad Rixmann as a ventriloquist conversing with "Eggmo" could be recast with the Republican legislative leadership as the dummy. Rixmann has built his legislative influence the old-fashioned way, with lots and lots of campaign contributions. In 2011, Rixmann gave $50,200 to the Republican Party of Minnesota, $22,000 to the Republican Senate Victory Fund, and $37,500 to the House Republican Campaign Committee. His 2010 and 2011 contributions to these three entities are just shy of $200,000 combined. This makes Rixmann one of the biggest contributors to the Minnesota Republican Party, almost in the same category as Stanley Hubbard and Bill Cooper.

If SF 1268 passes, pawnbrokers would be allowed to charge fees for the storage and maintenance of pawned collateral. There is no statutory limit to these fees, other than they be "reasonable." Similar to the broader banking industry, fees represent a source of new revenue even if new regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Agency limit the exorbitant interest rates that they charge.

In addition to defending the right of pawnbrokers to charge more fees for a pawn transaction, the Republican majority will defend the inalienable right of ticket scalpers to resell tickets. Technology, such as e-tickets, could make it more difficult for ticket resellers to mark up their products. Annette Meeks, CEO of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, defends the right to scalp tickets as a "personal right" to sell what you own. That's a quaint notion in a world where ticket scalpers are a $4.5 billion industry that uses computer technology to scoop up large quantities of tickets, and then turn around and resell tickets at a much higher price online. Hey, that's the free market at work!

There's no time for job creation at the Capitol, but the Republican party has plenty of time to carry water for their big campaign contributors. If this isn't what's meant by "crony capitalism," what does it mean?

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

The enemies of civilization

This bill is their wanted poster

End of the Roman Empire
sparticus.schoolnet.co.com

On January 30th, some of the most bilious and choleric enemies of a civil society -- including two District 41 representatives, Keith Downey (A) and Pat Mazorol (B),  Mary Liz Holberg, Steve Drazkowski, and King Banaian -- dropped this turd into the punchbowl. It is similar to a bill offered last session by Downey and the (former) Deputy, on the Senate side, Geoff Michel. (Oh, and this bulletin just in: Glencoe's Glenn Gruenhagen was added as an author; that will really seal the deal for a lot of people.)

Photo credit unknown

Essentially, this is how the proposed bill would work. Let's say you wanted to pull a few teeth --  just for the neighbors and a few friends; nothing big -- and some bureaucrat comes in and says, "You can't do that; it's practicing dentistry."

Whereupon, you say, "Ha! That seems burdensome to me. I'm really good with a pliers; I practiced on the dog; prove to me this 'practice of dentistry' stuff is really necessary."

And believe it or not, under the statute the state would have to prove it each and every time that some yahoo decided to become a shade tree dentist. It would be true of any profession or occupation licensed by the state -- or any political subdivision thereof.

The practice of medicine (I'm really good with a penknife and my old woodburning set; I ought to be able to remove warts and small skin cancers); the practice of law (I go an "A" in debate); accounting, building contractors, electricians, plumbers, cosmetologists, barbers, and any other licensed activity would be subject to the same rule of "least restrictiveness."

Anybody wishing to challenge a licensing requirement -- even if not the object of an enforcement action -- would be able to do so, and each and every time, it would be the licensor's burden to prove the health and safety necessity of the requirement. No matter how many times the licensor won, a litigant could still make the licensor prove the necessity of the rule the next case.

This bill turns the law on its head. The simple cost alone of defending every licensing regulation in each case staggers the imagination. And of course, that's the idea. Regulators will run out of money and will just give up.

And it is not as though you can't presently challenge a license or any other regulation, for that matter. But you bear the burden of proving why the rule is unconstitutional or is contrary to statute, or that the statute or ordinance itself was beyond the power of the body to enact or adopt. And if you win, it binds the governing body against everybody else.

Under the bill, merely because the governing body won once, that doesn't mean each and every person coming before it can't make the same argument (because the new person was not a litigant to the earlier decision and is not bound by it), requiring that the same experts come in to court and explain the same thing, over and over.

There's one other serious -- nay, fatal -- defect in the bill I haven't even mentioned yet: it violates the separation of powers under the Minnesota Constitution. If legislation is made within the scope of authority of the Legislature, you can't have a law that subsequently derogates that authority to a court. It is a denial of the democratic process.

It is astonishing that a group of legislators would hate the body they sit in so much that they would cheerfully give their legislative authority away, to a bunch of judges, and turning them into activist judges, to boot. Pitiful.

And you'll never guess who thinks this is a great idea.

Get outta my limelight, effer!

Brian Lambert, writing on the blog The Same Rowdy Crowd, mused about how the MSM was not exactly where you would go to get the scoop on Michele Bachmann during her run for president:

The striking thing to me, as I surfed hither and yon, was how little of Bachmann’s manifest recklessness with the truth made its way in to the print (or on-air) version of any of our three primary serious news entities.

Then Lambert assigns a little credit for the places where you could go to get coverage about Le Cirque du Bachmann:

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker wrote the definitive Bachmann profile, Karl Bremer at “Ripple in Stillwater”, Bill Prendergast and the rest at The Minnesota Progressive Project delivered the best day-to-day coverage and Rolling Stone laid out the most complete portrait of the pernicious effects of her rhetoric and influence.

CarlyGoogles.blogspot.com

Then, in an act of myopia and gracelessness, Bill Prendergast writes this:

I spotted one error in Lambert's article. Lambert tells his readers that local blogger Karl Bremer is one of group of locals "who delivered the best day-to-day coverage" of the Bachmann story at his Ripple in Stillwater blog. 

That is a factual error. I looked at Karl Bremer's Ripple in Stillwater blog yesterday--I looked back at past posts and found no "day-to-day coverage" of the Bachmann story there. 

I have no problem with Lambert recognizing Karl for something he has actually done. [Well, that's debatable, Bill.] But I do have a problem with Lambert reporting something that simply didn't happen, something that Karl simply didn't do.

Of course, Karl is also a contributor at Dump Bachmann, has made at least one appearance on Democracy Now that I am aware of, and has written extensively about people who circle in orbits around Michele Bachmann: Bradlee Dean -- whose real name I learned from Karl is really Bradley Dean Smith -- the Petters Ponzi schemers, including Frank Vennes, Jr., and Bobby Thompson, the Bachmann supporter and fake military charity huckster.

It was kind -- well not really; it was churlish and vindictive -- of Prendergast to do post count on what he thought were Bachmann stories at Ripple in Sillwater.

The whole exercise seemed like a kind of functional autism.

You would also think that, in the name of accuracy after all, that Prendergast would also have gone through Minnesota Progressive Project to check on the "day-to-day" coverage of Bachmann by all of the other writers there.

Because after all, Lambert credits them, too.

Report back to us, Bill.

White Earth casino proposal could be Vikings stadium timebomb

Thursday, White Earth tribal leader Erma Vizenor led a delegation to the Capitol to push for a joint state-tribal casino that would fund, in part, the state share of a Vikings stadium. The White Earth proposal is not new, and has been floated repeatedly since 2005. Initial reports about the Minnesota Wins proposal focused on its political shelf life (which might be very short.) But even if approved by the Legislature, any revenue sharing agreement might not pass muster with the federal government.

A related conflict between the city of Duluth and the Fond du Lac band of Chippewa over a 1994 revenue sharing agreement for the Fond-du-Luth Casino is instructive. In 2009, the tribal government ceased revenue sharing payments with the city, arguing that the agreement signed by previous leaders was unfair and illegal.

In July 2011, the tribe's position was upheld by the National Indian Gaming Council (NIGC), a federal board that enforces the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). Duluth has subsequently sued to enforce the 1994 agreement, which dictated that 19% of the gross revenue (about 30% of net revenue, or approximately $6 million per year) from the casino would be paid to the city each year. Duluth is in a difficult negotiating position. While they hold the lease to the building and could conceivably evict the casino, that would mean losing 300 jobs and a major draw downtown. And since the Fond du Lac band has since built the much larger Black Bear Casino on I-35, the threat of closing Fond-du-Luth is more bark than bite.

The NIGC's decision in the Fond-du-Luth case should give pause to anybody who would rely on a constant stream of revenue from a White Earth/State of Minnesota joint venture casino.

First, under the IGRA, a tribe must "maintain a sole proprietary interest and responsibility for the conduct of any gaming activity." Long term agreements that transfer a significant portion of the gaming revenue to another entity violate the Act.

Accordingly, final agency actions by NIGC and OGC legal opinions have found an improper proprietary interest in agreements under which a party, other than a tribe, receives a high level of compensation, for a long period of time. and possesses some aspect of control. The compensation in these instances was typically based on a significant percentage of net gaming revenue and often had terms beyond 5 years.

The bill proposed for the joint state-tribal casino would last for 30 years, the proposal unveiled today would divide net revenue 50/50 with the State of Minnesota, and the State of Minnesota would have significant control of the operation. It is a joint venture, not a sole proprietorship.

Second, the NIGC held that the $75 million paid in rent over the life of the agreement had no "rational relationship" to actual services provided. In order to be legitimate, payments to another governmental entity need to be of "tangible economic benefit justifying a share of gaming revenue." In other words, for another government to receive payments from a tribal casino, those payments need to be in fair exchange for actual services rendered.

It's hard to see how the Minnesota Wins proposal could be approved at the federal level, even if it were to get through the Legislature. Even worse, imagine if the revenue dried up in the middle of repaying bonds on a Vikings stadium. What the Fond-du-Luth case should tell you is that a tribal-state revenue sharing agreement isn't necessarily durable, even if everybody seems happy at first. Thirty years is a long time.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz
(Photo credit: Flickr user tbone_sandwich)

Talking with Dan from "Minnesota Majority"

This conversation is imagined, but it isn't so hard to imagine, really. Dan McGrath is the mouthpiece for Minnesota Majority, Ray Vanderveer's darling. The issue, of course, is the proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment to require a photo voter ID when showing up at the polls.

- o O o -

So Dan, you have to be a property owner to vote, right?

Why, yes, of course.

Well, no, not really. But surely you have to have an apartment or permanent place to live?

Certainly.

Sorry, another leading question, but wrong again. You can be homeless and you are still a citizen with a constitutional right to vote.

[mutters under breath]

I'm sorry?

Never mind.

We'll come back to residence later, but for now, here's the next question. You have to be a citizen to vote. How do you prove your citizenship?

With your driver's license of course.

I'm sorry to ask such hard questions, Dan. But the driver's license in your pocket does not prove you're a U.S. citizen.

Really? I mean, no, I guess not.

Don't feel bad, Dan; mine doesn't either. But I just got mine renewed for four years, if we adopt a requirement for a photo ID that would include a driver's license as a permitted identification document, wouldn't I and everyone with years to go on a license have to get a new one after proving to the AAA or some other licensing station that I was a citizen?

Gosh, I hadn't thought of that. Well, we could phase it in, so you just had to come up with proof of citizenship when you renewed.

That would mean, at least for the transition period, that some citizens would have to prove citizenship with documentation, and some wouldn't. [You swear or affirm your citizenship every time you vote, though, and you can be prosecuted, if you lie, under current law.]

So?

Sorry, Dave, I mean Dan, we can't do that.

Why?

Because it would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the Voting Rights of 1965, and the terms of the proposed photo voter ID amendment itself, probably among other things.

So we'll just make everybody get a new driver's license or whatever.

Don't you think it'll get a little crowded down at the courthouse or at AAA? And who's going to pay for it?

The people applying, of course.

If that's required, it will be an unconstitutional poll tax, and it would violate the provisions of the proposed amendment, too. Do you suppose AAA and the counties will want to do all this processing free?

Well, they should.

I can tell you're getting tired, Dan. We'll pick this up another time.

Republicans work with Chamber to outsource environmental permits

Wednesday morning, the Minnesota House Environment and Natural Resources Committee approved a bill that would outsource decisions on environmental permits to private firms hired by the corporation seeking the permit. In a related action, Republicans introduced another bill that would outsource Minnesota hen house security to a firm named FoxCorp.

Rep. Fabian (L) & MCC Lobbyist Kwilas (R)

As an observer at the Capitol, I'm always floored at the influence of lobbyists from the Chamber of Commerce, who seem to do most of the heavy lifting in crafting, presenting, and answering questions about bills nominally authored by Republicans. Today, Chamber lobbyist Tony Kwilas was plastered to the side of freshman Rep. Dan Fabian (R - Roseau) directing traffic. It's one of those things you just don't notice unless you're there to watch the delicate dance between lobbyists, agency representatives, and legislators.

Governor Dayton stole the thunder of Minnesota Republicans last year by issuing an executive order that preemptively adopted another environmental permitting bill. But when someone steals your legislative thunder, well, you make more thunder. Where the first bill set goals for timely permit approvals, HF 2095 would fundamentally change the nature of environmental permits, who writes them, and how they would be evaluated.

Here are some of the lowlights of HF 2095:

1) Corporations are people: '"Person" means an individual; as association or partnership; or a cooperative, municipal, public, or private corporation...'
2) Outsourcing the permit decision: Corporations (whoops, I meant people) can hire their own "permit application professionals" that have the power to submit a draft permit that is "deemed complete and approved" unless the agency denies it within 30 days. The Senate version of this bill would require the agency to find that the application was "clearly erroneous" to deny the permit. Who would the permit application professional serve? Not the people of Minnesota, but the corporation that hired them. This represents a colossal conflict of interest. The agency would then be on the clock to review a permit that they didn't write in a month.
3) Rewarding incomplete work: If an incomplete application for a permit is received, agencies would have 30 days to enumerate exactly how it is deficient. Fair enough, but the submission of an incomplete permit would also start a 150 day time window where a decision would have to be made about the application. In other words, you can submit an incomplete application and as soon as you push it across the desk, the state is on the clock to get you an answer. This provides a perverse incentive to submit incomplete applications.
4) Ten year feedlot permits: Under a provision added through an amendment today, feedlot permits would be issued for a decade.

DFL'ers on the committee offered amendments to remedy some of these problems in the bill but all were defeated on party line votes. Ultimately, HF 2095 was approved as amended, and is now heading to the House Jobs Committee.

The most telling moment of the hearing was when Chair Denny McNamara (R - Hastings) declared that there's nothing that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency does that private contractors don't have the ability to do, and that we shouldn't be naive about the ability of private contractors to process these permit applications. Rep. John Persell (DFL - Bemidji) said he appreciated that comment, and said "I agree, let's not be naive."

Yes, let's not be naive. Ability has nothing to do with it, it's about whose interests are being served. Minnesota's environmental laws protect our air, water, and the property rights of those who live near the operations requiring a permit. Allowing corporations to hire their own regulators is hiring the fox to guard the chicken coop.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Voting for Jim Crow

According to a Hot Dish Politics post by Jim Ragsdale, the Senate Local Government and Elections Committee is poised to vote on Scott Newman's photo voter ID bill tomorrow, Wednesday, February 15th; the committee is set to meet at 1:00 PM.

Aaron and I were at the initial hearing on the bill before the committee; we posted brief interviews about the effect of the amendment on immigrant citizens and the homeless. We also wrote about it, here and here. Many people, the elderly, minorities, the poor, the disabled, immigrant citizens, former military people, the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office, all testified against the amendment.

But it will all come for naught, because you see, the preening, sarcastic and dismissive chair of the committee, Ray Vanderveer and the Republicans on the committee don't give the tiniest rat's ass about all the people it will disenfranchise. In fact, disenfranchisement is the whole point of the exercise.

If you have the smallest doubt about that, you just had to watch Vanderveer hold the initial session open two hours so that Dan McGrath of Minnesota Majority -- a self-description, by the way -- could sweep in and insult everybody who showed up on time by saying that he could only make it later because he had a job; the implication being that everyone else there was a mere layabout. And to witness the warm reception that Vanderveer gave McGrath.

This is the same Dan McGrath, by the way, who has been urging his slavering dogs to go to the League of Women Voters' programs about the disenfranchisement that will be wrought by the amendment, such as the one that will happen in Edina tomorrow (Wednesday) night, and to "confront and counter" the "propaganda" of the League. And the dogs obey.

Whatever shred of lingering doubt about the outcome you may still harbor will surely be erased by considering the remarks of Republican senators such as Carla Nelson from Rochester, so thoughtless or craven as to say, well, you need a photo ID to cash a check or get a library card. Let us hope she is merely ignorant of the fact that the right to vote is guaranteed as a constitutional right, as both a federal and a state matter; the right to cash a check or check books out of the library is not.

Or by considering the story that Nelson told about her dear old dad, who, on the outset of dementia, lost his driver's license; Nelson was told by dad's doctor to be sure to get an ID for him in case he wandered off. This, according to the choked-up Nelson, was the perfect metaphor for poor people; why, we'd be doing them a favor by making them get an ID!

It would be much easier to keep track of them, after all.

And so it will go, my friends, as this amendment winds its way through bilious Republican-controlled committee after committee, until it comes to rest as a blot on the entire Legislature -- and perhaps even our dear old Minnesota.

Sviggum finds yet another ethical gray area

“In 34 and a half years of public service, my ethics has [sic] never, ever, ever been questioned,” Sviggum said. “Nor will it be.”

Sviggum with gray background

New GOP Senate Caucus Communication Director Steve Sviggum has a long record of public service, but a short memory.

Today, Sviggum attempted to throw himself under the bus to protect the rest of the GOP Senate Caucus from the consequences of using Senate staff time and Senate copiers to run off 4800 copies of a "constituent piece" that included a link to a Minnesota Senate Republican Caucus fundraising site. On Monday, his boss Dave Senjem brushed off concerns about the piece. It had been vetted by the Senate's attorney, and everything was kosher. Late in the day on Tuesday, just minutes after a campaign finance complaint was filed, Sviggum changed his tune:

"While yesterday we had vetted the language of the piece as being within constituent service and being within appropriate legal and ethical outreach, the link to the website was wrong," Sviggum said. "That is my fault and my problem."

Something about this whole "but it was thoroughly vetted by the lawyers" thing seems familiar. I wonder why?

In regard to serving as a University of Minnesota Regent and working for the Republican Senate Caucus: 

"I vetted the policy up front. I clarified the policy with the [general counsel]. I clarified with the chair," Sviggum said.

Which drew the following rebuke by U of M General Counsel Mark Rotenberg, who supposedly "vetted" the policy:

"Regent Sviggum did not discuss the job or consult about it with either the chair or vice chair of the Board of Regents prior to taking the position. Nor did Regent Sviggum discuss taking this position with the university general counsel or seek his advice about doing so."

Sviggum's status as a Regent is still up in the air. So much for vetting.

Of course, this is on the heels of yet another conflict of interest that forced Sviggum to resign his position as a U of M Humphrey Institute fellow. Guess what? That was vetted too! The only problem was that the committee that reviewed his candidacy for Regent didn't know about his new job:

Sviggum was recruited to apply for a seat on the board, and maintains he was always open about his position at the U. The Regent Candidate Advisory Council sorts through names of potential regents and sends them on to lawmakers to make the final choice. Jane Belau, who chairs the group, said they knew Sviggum taught occasionally at the U. But he said Sviggum was identified as a candidate in January, and his role at the U was expanded a month later. "The council sent its names over before the contract was signed between Regent Sviggum and the University of Minnesota," Belau said.

Eventually, Regent Sviggum resigned his Humphrey job after being asked to step down. But Sviggum still insists that his dual role was proper:

“I think it was wrong. I think if you would have pressed it, there was no prohibition to being a legislative fellow. There was no prohibition to being a university employee. I had already been elected regent. I think if I’d pressed it through a court of law or a process … I think the rulings would have come my direction."

And since Sviggum brought it up, this recent string of actions in the gray areas of ethics and conflict of interest rules isn't just a recent thing. Back in 2003, then Speaker Sviggum was asked by three DFL legislators to recuse himself from decisions about ethanol since a farm he jointly owned with his brothers benefited from ethanol subsidies. Once again, Sviggum recognized the perception of a conflict but refused to recuse himself. His supervisor-to-be at his ill-fated Humphrey job came to his defense (as he would again 8 years later):

University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs says he doesn't think Sviggum is violating any ethics rules. He says Sviggum's case falls into a "gray area." 

There's that phrase again. But let's remember:

“In 34 and a half years of public service, my ethics has [sic] never, ever, ever been questioned,” Sviggum said. “Nor will it be.” 

 Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Bachmann and Cain on Dancing with the Stars?

In the "too bizarre to be real" category, KSTP is reporting that Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain are being considered for the next season of Dancing with the Stars.

This is a bad decision by the show. Everyone knows that Marcus is the best dancer in the family.


Marcus Bachmann in "Believe" from city pages on Vimeo.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Who's doing the energy lobbying?

"Traditional Sources of Energy" circa 1939 | Credit: LOC

The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota released a "report" today that purports to document a shadowy conspiracy of clean energy lobbyists attempting to "rewrite Minnesota environmental policy."

A Freedom Foundation of Minnesota (FFM) investigation reveals that nine national foundations have steered $48 million in funding to more than 40 non-profits and local governments since 2003 in an aggressive campaign to radically rewrite Minnesota environmental policy.

Ooh, that sounds like a travesty. But wait, it gets even more dangerous:

In Minnesota, RE-AMP-supported nonprofits have registered dozens of lobbyists to become a major force at the Minnesota Capitol, according to state records. The group’s legislative muscle helped pass a series of far-reaching environmental laws capped by the 2007 Minnesota Next Generation Act, which included the Midwest’s most stringent mandates on carbon emissions, renewable energy and efficiency.

Oh no, "dozens of lobbyists?" "Major force" at the Capitol? If only someone would defend utility companies and coal and oil interests from this onslaught of green!

Let's look a little closer at some real numbers about energy lobbying in St. Paul. If you take all of the nonprofits in the Freedom Foundation report (excluding Minnesota Public Radio, who lobbies for a lot of things, but clean energy's not really one of them) and add up all of their lobbying spending from 2005-2010, it totals $3.9 million. Compared to a combined $23.9 million spent by utilities and fossil fuel companies over the same period, it's clear that the greens are obliterating the defenseless energy companies.

The largest lobbying presence at the Capitol in 2010 was Xcel Energy, and that's been true for a long time. In fact, over the same 2005-2010 period, Xcel alone spent over $10.6 million lobbying in Minnesota. When you combine that with another $9.36 million spent on lobbying the U.S. Congress (search for Registrant = Xcel) over the same period, you get $20 million.

I'm glad that the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota is reminding people that energy lobbying happens at the Capitol. But the idea that it's a shadowy network of nonprofits and green activists who have the upper hand is one of the most laughable ideas I've heard in a long time.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Not Almanac 2/13/12

The next episode of Not Almanac is cooked and ready! This week we talk about bullshit (specifically Republican bullshit), that ALEC fellow (whoever he is), Governor Dayton's increasingly sharp elbows, and design in politics with our guest Jesse Ross.

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If you prefer, you can download the episode here, or you can subscribe via iTunes through the same link.

Follow us on Twitter @blogspotdog, @TonyAngelo, @aaronklemz and @jesseross

The contradictions of Cravaack Country

If you haven't already read the excellent New York Times piece about the cognitive dissonance of Chisago County residents when it comes to government spending, you ought to. This article and the interviews that built it are a Rosetta Stone for understanding Tea Party conservatives who believe in cutting government spending.

Lindstrom Teapot Water Tower | Credit: J. Stephen Conn

Interviewing residents of North Branch, Lindstrom, Harris and Taylors Falls, the authors of this piece encounter a contradiction. The same people who profess to be for deep cuts in government spending are personally benefitting from that spending. A Lindstrom screenprinter who made t-shirts for Cravaack's campaign receives the Earned Income Tax Credit and free lunches for his school-aged children. A Harris tattoo artist complains about people on disability buying tattoos at his shop, saying "I can't afford new shoes like they have." His sister, disabled after suffering from a brain tumor, lives in an assisted-living facility at taxpayer expense. All of these folks are aware of the tension between their desire to cut government spending and the benefits that they and their loved ones receive from government health care programs, Social Security, and income support.

How they resolve this tension is the interesting part. There are several responses:

1) I earned it.
2) I'll never ask for government help, even if I need it.
3) I didn't ask for these programs, but since they exist I'll use them, even though I disagree with them. I could get by without them if I needed to.
4) I and/or my family benefit from these programs, but other people abuse the system. We need to cut the wrong people off from government spending so that we can save it for the right people. 

All of these seem like distinct reasons, but they have a common root; the belief that "others" are abusing the system. Not me! I earned it, but "others" didn't. I didn't ask for it, and "others" are taking advantage of the system. Even the apparently consistent #2 fundamentally misunderstands the nature of a social safety net. If push comes to shove and you have to make a choice between your sick child and your abhorrence of government, you'll probably turn to #4 as your justification.

The brilliance of this article is that it forces the realization that the "others" are all around the Tea Party rugged individualists. They are the people you know and care about, your mentally disabled sister, your school-aged children, your elderly parents.

The belief that "others" abuse the system (while you use it for the right reasons) is one linchpin belief that allows Tea Partiers to manage the cognitive dissonance created by the inconsistency of their belief in the need for spending cuts and their actions that rely on government spending. Another defense mechanism is a highly distorted version of what the government actually spends on a variety of programs.

How does one fight this dissonance? How can you force the realization that it's spending on us, not spending on others? And how do you correct the misperceptions about the nature of government spending and the causes of the deficit? That's the subject for my next post, which will summarize some of the social science research into cognitive dissonance and how it might provide a blueprint for reaching these voters.

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Either David Senjem

Clueless Dave

Either David Senjem is lying, or he is the most clueless chump to ever be the Majority Leader of the Minnesota Senate. It's a horse apiece, I guess.

Doug Grow reports at MinnPost that Senjem claims he didn't know that any Senators were members of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Just off the top of my head: Roger Chamberlain, Gen Olson (President Pro Tem of the Senate), John Howe, Gretchen Hoffman, and Chris Gerlach (former whip who sat with Senjem in the presser condemning Amy Koch) are all members of ALEC. There are undoubtedly more.

Okay, I had to look up Olson.

Senjem's protestation of ignorance innocence about senators in ALEC was made in response to the veto of four "tort reform" bills that Governor Dayton vetoed and issued a sharp rebuke to the Legislature in doing so. These were ALEC favorites, and Dayton pointed that out in a briefing to announce the vetoes. To the claim these were "jobs" bills, Grow reports:

"These were laughably characterized as jobs bills," Dayton said. "Calling a crow a swan doesn’t make it one."

Speaker Kurt "Voting is a Privilege" Zellers said that 62,000 business owners requested the law changed in the bills. A list, Mr. Speaker?

Sen. Juliane Ortman claimed that the bills were based on her courtroom experiences. Perhaps new Deputy Ortman would be so good as to jot off the case names so we can look them up. Seriously.

It is clear that Republican bullshit proceeded apace this week.

The cherry on top of this bullshit split, though, was Dave Senjem's plea to the governor to "put down the spears."

You first, Dave.