Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The Banana Republic of Minnesota: Now It Can Be Told

In a late-summer series of posts, I described how the Minnesota arm of Obamacare, MNsure, was going to distribute taxpayer-funded grants for “outreach” to loyal Democrat and liberal interests.  In a twist only Nancy Pelosi would appreciate, MNsure would only reveal the identity of grantees and the dollar amounts involved once the checks went out.

Now it can be told.  Today, MNsure announced the grantees and the dollars.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The Democrats' Met Council Plays the Long Game

The Twin Cities’ regional government, the Metropolitan Council, is embarking on an ambitious exercise in central planning for a 7-county area under the banner of Thrive MSP 2040.  As reported in local media, the Met Council hopes to completely remake the landscape of the metro region.  The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported last month,

Young "millennials" and the gray-haired baby boomers leading the so-called "silver tsunami" are rejecting big, outer-ring townhomes and looking for more modestly sized housing near transit, jobs and services.
For the seven-county Twin Cities area, population growth will be centered in St. Paul, Minneapolis and the developed inner-ring suburbs for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, growth will continue in the less-developed edges--but more slowly than previously thought.
Those are the latest predictions from the Metropolitan Council, which on Wednesday released preliminary population figures that forecast the metro growing by 893,000 residents by 2040
As I’ve written before, this view of the Metro’s future is based entirely on wishful thinking.  There are no trends visible in actual census data that would justify the Council’s shift to promoting core urban growth at the expense of suburban growth.
 

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Minnesota’s New Feudalism

I’ve written lately of the transformation of the North Star state under the one-party rule of the Democrats under the banner of The Banana Republic of Minnesota.

Author Joel Kotkin has taken to describing the transformation of his home state of California under one-party Democrat rule as the New Feudalism.  Since Minnesota’s liberal progressives see the Golden State as a model for all of America, Kotkin’s analysis may give us a glimpse into our own future.
 

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Follow the Money: SEIU Edition

In a recent post, I touched on the activities of the Minnesota chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  Even among labor unions, at the national level, SEIU has a reputation for strongly supporting President Obama.  In this post, I dig into SEIU’s involvement in the 2012 elections.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

The Invisible Koch Brothers

A lot partisans won’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.  For many on the left, the brothers David and Charles Koch—oil industry billionaires and Republican donors—collectively serve as Emmanuel Goldstein and all-purpose bogeyman to frighten the children of progressives at bedtime.

But facts are stubborn things, and the Koch Brothers have been non-factors in Minnesota politics.
A few years back, the left-leaning Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper did a series on money in state politics.  It tracked political donations from January 1, 2001 through August 2008.

Number 1 on the top 200 donor list was Alida Rockefeller Messinger—ex-wife of current Democrat Governor Mark Dayton—giving a total of $9,165,357 during the eight-year period.  The next highest amount was $7 million lower.  For more than a decade, Minnesota’s politics has been dominated by a single leftist donor, with access to the nearly limitless Rockefeller oil fortune.
A man named David A. Koch is ranked 20th on the list, donating $438,360, barely ahead of a few lesser members of the Dayton family.  He is not the David H. Koch of Koch Brothers fame.  George Soros appears on the list at 44th.  Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos ranks at 50th.  NBA commissioner David Stern appears on the list at 102nd.

Neither Koch Brother appears on the top 200 list.

Anatomy of Bias: New York Times [Updated]

Media bias is turning out to be the theme of the week.  In this edition of “Anatomy of Bias,” we take a look at a national story with a suspiciously local angle.

Monday, October 7, 2013

The Dead End Sitting in the Middle of the Road

How Political Centrism Always Leads to Bigger Government

As it does once a month, this Sunday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a commentary written by the state’s designated political centrists, former Democrat Congressman Tim Penny and former Independent candidate for governor, Tom Horner.

This month’s theme from Messrs. Penny and Horner was the Federal government shutdown, “If Congress won't lead, others must.”  They write,
A full-fledged debate over the appropriate role of government at the beginning of the 21st century is overdue. However, instead of a thoughtful discussion that explores legitimate ideological differences regarding the size and role of government, we hear only each side blaming the other.
I don’t know about Penny and Horner, but I hear that debate every day.  The problem is not a lack of debate, but that true “balanced solutions” cannot exist when the “ideological differences” are ones of kind and not degree. 

Sunday, October 6, 2013

The Anatomy of Bias: Minnesota Public Radio

You would think that, at this late hour in the proceedings, the question of whether the legacy news media exhibit political bias would be settled.  And for the most part it is.  Polling conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2012 indicates that 67 percent of the population believes that the media is biased either “a fair amount” or “a great deal.”  Pew reports that,

The number of Americans who believe there is a great deal of political bias in news coverage has edged up to [a record] 37% from 31% four years ago.  Republicans continue to express more concern about media bias than do Democrats, but the rise in recent years has occurred across party lines.

Still, it’s a lesson worth relearning from time to time.  A more interesting question would be how such biases present themselves.  It is still relatively rare that a legacy media figure will make flat out statements along the lines of “Republicans are bad, Democrats are good.”
 

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

The Age of Herbert Stein


Even with the warm weather lingering into October, I’m declaring an end to summer and marking the return of The Column.

We have entered Day Two of a Federal government shutdown, the latest in a series of a dozen-and-a-half such shutdowns that have occurred over the past forty years or so.

The latest deadlock between Congress and the President is the result of the unbridgeable divide between the parties that I’ve been writing about for the past two years.  The differences between Democrats and Republicans are ones of kind, not of degree.  Since there is no overlap in what the two parties want, there is no natural point of compromise.

More interesting than the national story is the local dispute between the Minnesota Orchestra and its musicians.  This dispute/lockout/strike had dragged on for more than a year and has cost the Orchestra its celebrity conductor and more than a full season worth of concerts.

In the Matter of Public Safety Matters, Part 4

In this series, I chronicle the activities of Public Safety Matters Campaign, a police-union-backed effort to defeat Republican candidates for the Minnesota State Legislature in 2012.

Until very recently, Republicans and police unions tended to get along.  In Part 2 of this series, I note how Republican Tim Pawlenty received police union support in both of his runs (2002, 2006) for Minnesota Governor.