I spent most of yesterday watching Twitter traffic relating to the Deadbeat MnGOP's State Convention in St. Cloud, where there was plenty of bleating about "fiscal responsibility." Yeah, "right." One tweet I sent: How pathetic has the #MnGOP become? When asking if they paid their #mngop12 tab before splitting town is a serious question. #StribPol
So I go out to the mailbox yesterday, and what do I find in it? A 12 x 8 1/2 inch, full color "PUBLIC DOCUMENT -- OFFICIAL BUSINESS -- This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense" sent from none other than Postage Stamp Paulsen.
This is the front - and at 12 inches by 8 1/2 inches, it's too big to make a full scan of it, let alone a full screenshot - let's look!
And before we tee'd off; before the "Gentlemen, start your golf carts!" announcement, Tim got up to speak (before cutting the IRRRRRRRRRRRB ribbon): "So I'm on the way over here, and my aide goes: "Governor, you ready to play? Got your sticks? Shoes? Glove? Balls?"
Tim continues: "Listen, I'm a Republican that travelled willingly to the Range; I got plenty of balls!"
Don't care who ya are; that's a funny joke.
And: it doesn't excuse Timmeh's horrible record as Governor.
But: it does help explain why Timmeh won - TWICE. He's personable, and he knows how to tell a joke.
DFL endorsed candidates should pay attention.
Well, the Party, on Plato, too.
So, watch out for Kurt Bills. He's personable; the jury's still out on if he can tell a joke. If he can, and with the Ron Paul Anointment, it may spell trouble.....
A solid majority of the delegation Minnesota Republicans will send to this Summer's Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., will be going in support of Texas Congressman Ron Paul for President.
Going into the state convention, Paul had 20 of the 24 national delegates selected at District Conventions. The Paul side captured 12 of 13 remaining delegates elected at the state convention.
As Republicans were close to wrapping up their two-day convention, Jeff Johnnson, speaking as a national committeeman, addressed the tension in the convention hall between Paul supporters and other Republicans.
"The folks who really just want to purge the party of the Ron Paul people, the folks that I've heard say why can't it just be like it was six or eight years ago, my advice to you is get over it," Johnnson said.
Rep. Mike Parry (R-Waseca) announced his leadership team for his Congressional campaign. Parry is competing against former Rep. Allen Quist in the MN-01 MNGOP primary to face Rep. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) in November's election.
Parry's list is a laundry list of legislators but includes some interesting choices. Here's how I think they could help his campaign:
Amy Koch - will advise the campaign on what not to do?
Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann ... uh wait ... lemme start over ... Swiss citizen Rep. Michele Bachmann ... um ... erm ... hold on ... Try #3 ... Native Iowan Michele Bachmann endorsed a candidate for Iowa State Senate. Yeah ... I think I have that right.
Jeff Mullen, pastor of Point of Grace Church in Waukee and Republican state Senate candidate, received the endorsement of former GOP presidential candidate Bachmann on Wednesday, according to the Des Moines Register.
The Minnesota congresswoman was frequently in Iowa last fall and winter as she campaigned for the GOP presidential nomination. She had a less-than-warm welcome during a stop in Iowa City last December. A self-described gay robot heckled the congresswoman and other locals came to protest Bachmann's positions on social issues.
And Bachmann wasn't very popular in Iowa City on caucus night, either. While the one-time Iowa caucus front-runner earned 5 percent state-wide, she only garnered about 2.5 percent of Johnson County caucus-goers' support.
Why would she do that?
Remember how Bill Prendergast always talks about the evangelical movement being America's third party? Bachmann is just trying to help out another evangelical into office.
The Rochester Chamber of Commerce wanted redevelopment of the Rochester Mayo Civic Center included in the bonding bill. Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem (R-Rochester) failed to get it in. Actually, Republicans at the Capitol were barely able to cobble together a bonding bill and it was the state's smallest ever.
As Senate Majority Leader and Chair of the Capital Investment Committee, you'd think he'd have the ability to deliver what his city's business community needs.
When Senjem appeared before the Rochester Chamber of Commerce he first tried to explain that his failure wasn't actually a failure -- they could apply for a grant to redevelop the Civic Center.
"I don't know if you could have written criteria that more closely identifies with Mayo Civic Center," the Rochester Republican said.
Senjem, who is chairman the Senate Capital Investment Committee, helped craft the $496 million bonding bill that was signed by DFL Gov. Mark Dayton last week. That bill did not include $35 million requested by the city of Rochester to expand Mayo Civic Center. To qualify for an economic development grant, a project must bring in money from Minnesota and outside the state, help cover maintenance costs of a public facility and create jobs. If Rochester doesn't get the grant money, "it's purely politics," Senjem said.
But local Democrats said the grant fund is not good enough. Rep. Kim Norton, DFL-Rochester, said there will be plenty of competition for those limited dollars. She blamed Republicans in the Minnesota House for failing to advocate for the civic center project.
"We needed stronger advocates in the majority to get that bill through, and that's the honest truth," she said.
Rep. Duane Quam (R-Byron) tried to blame the Chamber for lobbying for the wrong thing:
Quam said Rochester should have sold the project as a convention center project instead of a civic center project since the funding would go primarily toward creating additional convention space.
Way to get things done for your people, Duane. Why weren't you representing your city and the needs of the businesses in your district?
Senjem joined in the blame game and blamed the city's lobbyist for the failure:
Senjem blamed the city's lobbyist for the project's failure to get into the bonding bill. He said the strategy had been to include the Mayo Civic Center in the bonding bill because the design work had already been done and to include the St. Cloud Civic Center because that community had put money toward the project. But he said the plan was to leave out the Mankato Civic Center because no design work had been done. He said Rochester's lobbyist, Flaherty & Hood, P.A. of St. Paul, who also lobbies for Mankato, began "creating all kinds of hoopla and political difficulty."
Now that's leadership, Republican-style. Don't do what needs to get done then blame somebody else for your failure.
The problem isn't government, the problem is who is running the legislature.
If you read this blog regularly or, you know, breathe, you probably know who Mitt Romney is.
Eduardo Saverin, on the other hand, wasn't a household name until last week. He co-founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg, and started making news recently when, ahead of the social networking behemoth's IPO, he planned to renounce his American citizenship?
Why? His public reasoning was that he's been living in Singapore for three years, and just doesn't want to carry an American passport any longer.
Of course, Singapore has no capital gains tax, and Saverin could pay as much as $67 million as a result of the impending IPO in taxes to the American government if he remains a citizen.
Funny thing though: if the State Department finds that he's renouncing his citizenship to avoid taxes, not only do they have the power to collect those taxes anyway, but they can prevent him from ever entering the country again.
Like, ever. For reals. And they're working on it.
So where's the connection to Mitt Romney? But for his megalomaniacal devotion to getting a political title in front of his name, Mitt Romney has done time and time again what Saverin is just now trying to do: expatriate his wealth and avoid paying his fair share of taxes on it. The Caymans, Switzerland, you name it: if there's a way for Mitt Romney to stash money somewhere around the world, safe from his responsibility as an American citizen, he has done and will continue to do it.
And you know what? it would be totally fine to do so if only every American citizen had the same options. People like Saverin and Romney can go anywhere, do anything they want, avoid excise taxes and sales taxes and sin taxes and state income taxes and all the other taxes that we poor shmucks in the 99% pay every day simply because they're rich. Their money can buy them anything they want, including more money.
Saverin thinks this entitles him to do whatever he pleases with every last dollar of his insane wealth (and it is insane; if you think that $67 million tax bill will put a dent in his proceeds from the Facebook IPO you're kidding yourself). Romney thinks this makes him the very image of the American Dream, and thus a good choice to occupy the Oval Office for a few years.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) has undertaken a couple of initiatives that should be more high-profile in the mainstream than they are. It's no secret that if about 300 or more of the current United States House of Representatives were replaced with Keith-clones, we'd all be dealing with a much better outlook, politically and economically.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Keith Ellison launched a new piece of legislation that would repeal $113 billion of tax-breaks, handouts, and subsidies for the fossil fuel industry over the next 10 years.
Not only is fossil fuel the richest industry on earth, but any of us who pay taxes write it a hefty check each year. It's as if we're paying them a performance bonus for wrecking the climate. We'll never get to renewable energy if we keep handing gobs of money to oil and coal and gas.
Conservatives will block it, of course. That's the idea.
So it's great news that Common Cause and a handful of other plaintiffs - including our own Keith Ellison - are suing the Senate, claiming that the filibuster is unconstitutional
Now that former Congressman Rick Nolan has the DFL endorsement, the Minnesota DFL delegation is pulling together a fundraiser for him. He certainly needs the help. He trails former State Senator (and former Bachmann challenger) Tarryl Clark by nearly a decimal point in cash on hand. The winner of the August primary between Jeff Anderson, Clark and Nolan will face Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN/NH).
Plus, once Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar are back in the district, they'll certainly be helping him win the primary. Walking in parades and standing onstage with them ain't going to hurt.
The fundraiser's hosts include Minnesota's entire Democratic Congressional delegation and non-Gopher State Members that Nolan served with during his previous stint on Capitol Hill. Nolan has a competitive primary and is trying to send a message that Minnesota's Democratic establishment and others are coalescing around his candidacy.
Those set to attend Nolan's fundraiser included Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, and Reps. Collin Peterson, Betty McCollum, Keith Ellison and Tim Walz. Also among the fundraiser's hosts were the former occupant of the seat, ex-Rep. James Oberstar.
"We're all in this together," McCollum's chief of staff, Bill Harper, said. He noted that it is highly common for Representatives to support candidates who have earned the state party endorsement in this manner, adding that the DFL endorsement "carries a lot of weight."
(Politico)
This legislative session (and like a broken record), they promised to focus on creating jobs. They had massive trouble passing a stadium bill which, because billionaire sports team owners always get their way, became their top priority. They had all sorts of trouble passing a bonding bill and ended up passing the smallest one ever. Their tax bill was full of Underpants Gnome Economic Theory and hurt the middle class so Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed it.
While Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk may have characterized the MNGOP-controlled legislature as the "Do Nothing Legislature," they outdid themselves this session in one particular aspect: they introduced 78 far right bills instead of doing what they said they were going to do -- create jobs.
Below the fold, you'll find a list that goes up to 42. But since I listed 19 ballot measures as one item, its actually 61. Next if you consider that companion bills were introduced for 17 of the items listed, that increases the total to 78.
This is more than twice last session's 32 bills that I counted.
Its also explains why they only passed 245 bills, the smallest amount since 1869 -- they were too busy considering their RWNJ wet dreams.
When his pregnant wife died in a car accident in 1986, (Republican candidate Allen) Quist had the six-and-a-half-month-old fetus placed in his wife's arms in an open casket at the funeral.
Wow. I didn't know that about Quist. And there's a bunch of other things I didn't know about Quist in a profile that appears in Mother Jones article that appeared this week. (See the link below.)
People who follow Minnesota politics know that Quist was a key figure in bringing the state's evangelical right into partisan politics. They know Quist's longstanding relationship to the state's most prominent politician, Michele Bachmann. (Quist's wife is a longtime Bachmann staffer, a staffer who's never been replaced despite Bachmann's notorious penchant for turnover.)
But did you know that Quist "believes that humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted in Southeast Asia as late as the 11th century?"
There's a bunch of stuff like that, in this MoJo profile...
(CONTINUED)
I spent most of yesterday watching Twitter traffic relating to the 
Presented 
Mikey's Super Cool Winner's Only List
Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann ... uh wait ... lemme start over ... Swiss citizen Rep. Michele Bachmann ... um ... erm ... hold on ... Try #3 ... Native Iowan 
The Rochester Chamber of Commerce wanted redevelopment of the Rochester Mayo Civic Center included in the bonding bill. Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem (R-Rochester) failed to get it in. Actually, Republicans at the Capitol were barely able to cobble together a bonding bill and it was the state's smallest ever.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) has undertaken a couple of initiatives that should be more high-profile in the mainstream than they are. It's no secret that if about 300 or more of the current United States House of Representatives were replaced with Keith-clones, 
Now that former Congressman Rick Nolan has the DFL endorsement, the Minnesota DFL delegation is pulling together a fundraiser for him. He certainly needs the help. He trails former State Senator (and former Bachmann challenger) Tarryl Clark by nearly a decimal point in cash on hand. The winner of the August primary between Jeff Anderson, Clark and Nolan will face Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN/NH).
In 2011, Republicans promised to work on the budget and focus on creating jobs. Instead they introduced 
