Ringing in March on the Radio

We kick off March with a bang on the radio.

King Banaian Show, AM 1570

Saturday morning, March 1^st at 9 a.m., I’ll be filling in again for King Banaian on his radio show.  Our guests will be: 

• Elizabeth Emerson, Director of Government Relations for Goff Public, will update us on the first week of the 2014 session of the state legislature.
• Kim Crockett, COO of the Center of the American Experiment, will talk about pension solvency.
• Gita Sitaramiah, Director of Communications for Greater MSP, will talk about strategies to grow our regional economy.
• Tom Fisher, Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, will talk about transportation policy.

Gilmore and Glahn Radio Hour, Blog Talk Radio

On Sunday’s Gilmore And Glahn show, we’re hosting conservative columnist Diana West for the whole hour from 4 to 5 p.m.

Minnesota’s Radio Forum, AM 1570

This week we taped our March episode of Minnesota’s Radio Forum.  This month the topic is Jobs and our guests include, 

• Bill Blazar of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce
• Julie Bunn, former State Representative from the Lake Elmo area and a Stanford PhD. in Economics
• Traci Tapani, Co-President of family-owned Wyoming Machine and a state Chamber board member

The program will air at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 8.

Big Weekend for Radio

I have the unique honor of filling in for King Banaian on his radio show this Saturday.  It runs from 9 to 11 a.m. on station AM 1570.

My guest in the 9 am hour will be Fluence Media's Blois Olson.  Joining me in the 10 am hour will be the Taxpayers League's Ted Lillie.

And, as always, I'll be co-hosting the Gilmore and Glahn Blog Talk Radio show Sunday at 4 pm.  Tune in!

The Indonesian Connection

I wrote last week about some interesting coincidences surrounding a young Democrat party donor, who is making a name for himself on the national political scene.

From Utah, With Love

Last week, I mentioned an odd transaction reported in the 2013 filing submitted by the Minnesota Democrat Party (officially, the Minnesota DFL State Central Committee) to the Campaign Finance Board.

On March 15, 2013 (the Ides of March), Minnesota Democrats contributed $27,500 to the Utah State Democratic Committee.

According to records on file at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), exactly one week later (March 22^nd), Utah’s Democrats transferred $25,000 from their federal campaign account to the federal campaign account of the Minnesota Democrat party.

In the Matter of Public Safety Matters, Part 4

Democrat State Representative Carly Melin represents Hibbing and environs in the state legislature.  While I don’t admire her politics, I do admire her taking on the state’s public safety union machine.

Rep. Melin is advocating for medicinal marijuana, and is running into (her words) “a brick wall” of union bosses concerned that legalization may reduce law enforcement budgets.

Prominent in opposition is union chief Dennis Flaherty, who refuses to negotiate with Melin on her bill.  Observant readers may recall Mr. Flaherty’s starring role in my series of posts [1, 2, and 3] on the shadowy political group Public Safety Matters Campaign.

Hired Guns, Part 2

Digging deeper into campaign finance reports, amazing coincidences keep popping up.  In Part 1 of this series, I documented a series of remarkable coincidences around a company called Enlightened Enterprises (or Enlighten Enterprise) of 254 Wheeler Street, St. Paul.

Today, I document a series of coincidences around a company called Key Strategies, LLC.  In the 2012 report for the Minnesota DFL Senate Caucus, senate Democrats report making a series of four payments to the company (p. 75).  Key Strategies is also listed under the 254 Wheeler Street address and received a total of $8,250 from March 7, 2012, to June 5, 2012.  Payment was for “strategic consulting.”

Hired Guns, Part 1

From the “Now It Can Be Told” file, the campaign finance reports recently filed in Minnesota include a treasure trove of interesting information.  There is so much data involved, if you dig deep enough, you can uncover all kinds of amazing coincidences.

Take, for example, a handful of transactions reported by the Democrats in the state senate, officially the Minnesota DFL Senate Caucus.

From Minnesota, With Love

Perusing the 2013 report recently filed by the Minnesota Democrat Party (officially, the Minnesota DFL State Central Committee) makes for surprisingly interesting reading.

For a non-election year, the state’s Democrats did well, taking in over $2 million in 2013, up considerably from the $1.45 million the party received in 2011.

As expected, Alida Rockefeller Messinger was the biggest donor, giving $540,000 (see report, p. 9). 

Railroaded

Two Democrat state legislators got their picture in the newspaper this week for proposing a new tax and additional regulations on railroads and pipelines that transport crude oil through Minnesota.

Put aside the fact that many other flammable and explosive commodities travel by rail and pipe.  A series of high profile accidents has drawn attention to safety issues surrounding the transportation of oil.

What I find interesting is less the “what” than the “who.”  Minneapolis state representative Frank Hornstein and state senator Scott Dibble are introducing the bill.  Both hold leadership posts on transportation issues in their respective houses.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the two lawmakers are being assisted by a local non-profit, MN350.org.  The Star Tribune reports that,

The proposal also has the support of MN350, an environmental group that opposes crude oil pipelines and rail shipping.  The group’s attorney, Paul Blackburn, is helping legislators draft the language.

If you are genuinely interested in improving the safety of an activity, why would you have a group opposed to having the activity done at all write the rules for doing it?  It seems that this bill is less a safety measure than a stalking horse for a ban on transporting oil within Minnesota.  That, of course, would cause significant problems for the state’s two oil refineries.

When done by Republicans and conservatives, having an outside group draft legislation is considered a national scandal.  (Google the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC).   In fact, Sen. Dibble is the chief author of an anti-ALEC senate bill, SF 26, that seeks to outlaw the practice.

I’m sure safety improvements can be made, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of this exercise.

Your Papers, Please

Democrats no longer believe in "count every vote"

I guess if you live long enough you eventually see everything.  It’s just that there are some things you don’t expect to see so soon.

Less than two years removed from waging a multi-million-dollar campaign to defeat the voter identification amendment on the 2012 ballot, Minnesota’s Democrats have decided to impose voter identification requirements…on their own party members.