I've worked for politicians, a PR firm, corporations, nonprofits, and state and federal government. Since 2000, I've run a PR and marketing sole proprietorship. I think politics is important, maddening, humorous and good fodder for a spirited conversation. So, I hang out here when I need a break from life.
This is an awkward time for Minnesota’s brand-new marijuana legalization law. Currently, it’s legal to use marijuana, grow marijuana plants at home, and keep up to two pounds of it. At the same time, it’s illegal to buy or sell it.
However, it is still legal to buy and sell hemp-derived products, which, by the way, have the same intoxicating impact on a user as marijuana-derived products.
It all makes perfect sense, right?
Actually, it does. Or at least it will. Minnesota is wisely taking time to get its regulatory framework built before it starts letting stores sell cannabis, but the new framework will eventually make good sense.
Mostly.
Most components of the law are logical. Beyond the fact that I worry state politicians may have taxed marijuana products at too high of a rate to allow legal products to put the black market out of business, Minnesota Public Radio recently revealed a particularly wacky provision in the weed law:
A pending update limits use of both hemp-derived THC products and marijuana to adults age 21 and older, but it says establishments can’t serve someone both alcohol and THC products during the same visit.
Under the new law, if the bar knows that a customer has had a marijuana-based beverage within five hours, they’re not allowed to sell them an alcoholic drink, and vice versa. To manage this legal mandate, some bars say they will have THC drink customers wear wristbands or get ink stamps.
To be clear, Minnesota’s bars can still sell you multiple shots of alcohol in a row. Or they can sell multiple THC drinks in a row. That kind of dangerous selling is legal.
However, bars can’t legally sell you one beer and one THC seltzer in a single sitting or they run afoul of the law.
This makes no sense. Total speculation here, but I can imagine this provision being inserted to win over the vote of a holdout state legislator who had an uninformed hunch that mixing alcohol and THC might be super-duper intoxicating as if the two drinks were the intoxicant equivalent of coke and Mentos.
Obviously, the THC impact on bar customers will be somewhat different than the alcohol impact. After all, the impacts of different kinds of alcoholic drinks — beer, wine, straight shots, and mixed drinks — vary a bit in their intoxicating impact too. Therefore, mixing THC and alcoholic drinks will create a somewhat new sensation for people to learn to manage.
But the impact of mixing drinks that are derived from different plants – grapes, hops, potatoes, grains, juniper, cannabis, sugar cane, agave — isn’t different enough to warrant strict segregation of usage. It puts a regulatory burden on bars and the state that delivers little to no public benefit. This ill-conceived provision should be eliminated the next time the Minnesota Legislature adjusts this law.
This past winter and spring, the DFL-controlled state House, Senate, and Executive branch produced much more for ordinary families than Republicans ever did when they were in power. It’s not close.
As a result, things are getting heady for Walz and DFL legislators. To cite just one example of the national acclaim they’re getting, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne recently lavished praise on the Minnesota DFL’s 2023 legislative tour de force with a sloppy wet kiss of a column.
“The avalanche of progressive legislation that the state’s two-vote Democratic majority in the Minnesota House and one-vote advantage in the state Senate have enacted this year is a wonder to behold.
It’s no wonder former president Barack Obama tweeted recently: ‘If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.’
Democrats in the state are known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from their merger with a third party in the 1940s. True to the name, the party’s agenda combined social concerns such as abortion rights with what Long called “bread-and-butter, populist things that sell everywhere in the state.”
Well, E.J., thanks to the rural-urban division that the Minnesota Republican Party relentlessly promotes on the campaign trail, the DFL achievements don’t actually sell well “everywhere” in the state. According to an early May 2023 KSTP-TV/Survey USA poll, Walz still has much lower approval ratings in rural parts of the state (51% in the southern region, 42% in the western region, and 46% in the northeastern region) than he has in the Twin Cities seven-county metropolitan area (60% approval).
Still, Governor Walz’s 2023 performance is selling relatively well statewide. He has the approval of 54% of Minnesotans, compared to the disapproval of 41%. In a purple state that Trump only lost by 1.5 points in 2016, Walz’s 13-point net positive approval rating is impressive. Progressivism is selling pretty well in this purple state.
However, the political debate is just heating up. We can expect Republicans campaigning in 2026 to focus on the unpopular, vague notion of “government spending increases,” rather than the DFL’s specific policy changes. After all, polls show that individual DFL-enacted achievements are popular. For instance, 80% of Americans support paid family and medical leave, 80% of Americans support more child care assistance for families, 76% of Minnesotans support universal background checks for gun purchases, and 69% of Americans support more school funding, to name just a few of the many popular policies that DFLers passed during the 2023 session. Therefore, Republicans will focus on how much more the DFL-controlled state government is spending, not the DFL’s signature policy achievements.
It is true that the state budget is increasing under DFLers in 2024. But is state government spending really that high?
According to usgovernmentspending.com, state spending in Minnesota in 2024 will be 10.15% of the state’s GDP, making it a middling 25th among the 50 states. Yawn.
So, sure, our Republican-controlled “race-to-the-bottom” neighbors in Iowa (9.87% of GDP), Wisconsin (9.64% of GDP), North Dakota (9.08% of GDP), and South Dakota (8.12% of GDP) are spending less than in Minnesota. No surprise there.
But state spending in Minnesota is nothing like what is happening annually in the top ten states of New Mexico (17.64%), Alaska (16.96%), West Virginia (16.42%), Vermont (16.12%), Hawaii (15.88%), Kentucky (15.18), Oregon (15.14%), Mississippi (14.94%), Louisiana (13.78%), and Maine (13.51%).
Despite Minnesota Republicans’ red-faced hyperbole about the DFL’s “out of control spending,” in a national context Minnesota is, meh, just average.
Governor Tim Walz and Minnesota DFL state legislators are getting glowing national attention for passing an array of progressive changes in recent months. NBC News recently reported:
Nearly four months into the legislative session, Democrats in the state have already tackled protecting abortion rights, legalizing recreational marijuana and restricting gun access — and they have signaled their plans to take on issues like expanding paid family leave and providing legal refuge to trans youths whose access to gender-affirming and other medical care has been restricted elsewhere.
“When you’re looking at what’s possible with a trifecta, look at Minnesota,” said Daniel Squadron, the executive director of The States Project, a left-leaning group that works to build Democratic majorities in state legislatures.
In fact, the Legislature passed more bills in its first 11 weeks of the current session than in the same time frame of every session since 2010, according to an analysis by The States Project.
To me, the lesson is clear: When voters in gridlocked purple states elect Democrats, Democrats deliver on changes that are popular with a majority of voters. However, Republicans who have blocked these same politics for decades see it differently. They’re crying “overreach.” And crying. And crying. And crying.
What’s “overreach?” Republicans claim “overreach” every time something passes the Legislature that they and their ultra-conservative primary election base oppose. A more reasonable definition is passing something that a majority of all Minnesotans oppose, If DFLers are doing that, it would reasonable to conclude that they have gone beyond the electoral mandate they were given in November 2022.
By that definition, DFLers aren’t overreaching. For instance, survey data show that 67% of Minnesotans oppose abortion bans, and therefore presumably support DFL efforts to keep abortion legal in Minnesota in the post-Dobbs decision era. Likewise, gun violence prevention reforms are extremely popular with Minnesotans – 64% back red flag laws and 76% want universal background checks. Sixty percent of Minnesotans support legalizing marijuana for adults. Sixty-two percent support making school lunches free. Fifty-nine percent say everyone should receive a ballot in the mail.
I can’t find Minnesota-specific survey data on all of the other changes DFLers are making, but national polls give us a pretty good clue about where probably Minnesotans stand. Given how overwhelming the size of the majorities found in the following national surveys, there’s no reason to believe that Minnesotans are on the opposite side of these issues: More school funding (69% of Americans support), a public option for health insurance (68% of Americans support), disclosing dark money donors to political campaigns (75% of Americans support), child care assistance for families (80% of Americans support), and paid family and medical leave (80% of Americans support).
Granted, Minnesotans may be a few points different than national respondents on those issues. But it’s just not credible to believe that there isn’t majority support among Minnesotans on those issues.
The only issue where there might be a wee bit of overreach is on the restoration of the vote for felons. While national polls find 69% support for restoring the vote for felons who have completed all of their full sentence requirements, including parole, that support might be a little weaker for restoring the vote before parole is completed, which is what DFLers passed. A survey of Minnesotans conducted by the South Carolina-based Meeting Streets Insights for the conservative Minnesota-based group Center for the American Experiment found only 36% support on this question:
“Currently in Minnesota, convicted felons lose their right to vote until their entire sentence is complete, including prison time and probation. Would you support or oppose restoring the right to vote for convicted felons before they serve their full sentence?”
I don’t suspect that restoration of the vote for felons is a top priority issue for the swing voters who decide close elections. Moreover, the strong 69% support found in surveys for restoring the vote after parole indicates that if DFLers are perceived to be “overreaching,” it likely will be viewed by swing voters as a relatively minor one. Republicans probably will try to characterize this as “a power grab to stuff ballot boxes with votes of convicted criminals” in the 2024 general election campaigns. But they won’t have much luck with that issue, beyond the voters who were already supporting them based on other issues.
I understand that the loyal opposition has to say something as DFLers hold giddy bill-signing celebration after celebration on popular issues. But survey data indicate that Republicans’ “overreach” mantra is, well, overreach.
In 1910, writer Jack Johnson nicknamed white boxer James Jeffries the “Great white hope” as Jeffries prepared to fight the black fighter Jack Johnson. Apparently, Mr. Jeffries represented something that many fans found discomforting about Mr. Johnson.
Similarly in 2023, Republican elites are desperately searching for a Great Non-Trump Hope, sometimes quietly referred to as “Trump with a brain, “Trump without the crazy,” or “Trump without the chaos.” Most Republicans have settled on the charismatically challenged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh off his landslide reelection win over Democrat Charlie Crist.
At this point, a lot of Republican voters outside of Florida don’t know much about DeSantis. They know he’s not as undisciplined as Trump, and that he has handily won recent elections at a time when Trump has been regularly rejected by general election voters.
But beyond presenting himself as a stable winner, DeSantis is pushing a set of extremist policies that appeal to anti-“woke” Republicans. That may make sense as a primary election strategy, but how about as a general election strategy? How popular will DeSantis’s Republican-friendly platform be with the all-important swing voters in battleground states?
These numbers are jaw-dropping. If DeSantis wants to run ads promoting his stands on these issues, Democrats should offer to pay for them.
An overwhelmingly unpopular policy agenda isn’t even DeSantis’s biggest challenge. His more limiting political leg iron is that he can’t begin to match the Trump bombast and charisma that seems to be the primary driver of Trump’s enduring popularity with Republicans. That will become much more apparent as the primary campaign season heats up, once DeSantis and Trump start appearing on the same stage together. The man the former President belittles as “Tiny D” will shrink in that setting.
In other words, the problem with the pursuit of “Trump without the crazy” is that a majority of Republican primary voters adore “the crazy.”
DeSantis won’t look nearly as attractive facing general election voters in the spring of 2024 as he looked to Republican primary voters in the winter of 2023. And if Trump somehow loses the Republican endorsement, he will continue attacking DeSantis long after the primaries are over. All the while, DeSantis’s “anti-woke” policy agenda will further sully him with general election swing voters, particularly suburban women, people of color, and young people.
All of which is to say, it ain’t easy being DeSanctimonius.
Eight years ago, the owners of the Minnesota Vikings, Zygy and Mark Wilf, paid about 21 percent of the cost of the new Vikings’ stadium. At the time, an obscure socialist blogger described what we knew about the sweetheart cost-sharing arrangement:
Vikings PR people like to tell Minnesotans that the team’s owner, billionaire Zygi Wilf, is paying about 60 percent of the ever-growing $1.2 billion stadium cost.
The truth, as Star Tribune/1500ESPN columnist Patrick Reusse pointed out back in May 2012, is that something like $450 million of the Wilf’s share will be paid by people otherthan the Wilfs. For instance, season ticket holders will be making exorbitant seat license payments to the Wilfs, the National Football League will be paying a subsidized “loan” to the Wilfs, and U.S. Bank will be making naming rights payments to the Wilfs. All of this will offset the Wilf’s stadium costs by about $450 million
Taking all of that into consideration, Mr. Wilf looks to be shelling out more in the neighborhood of $250 million of his own money, or 21% of the cost of the $1.2 billion total, not the 60 percent the Vikings claim.
It’s difficult for an outsider to come up with precise numbers, but that seems like a pretty fair, pardon the pun, ballpark estimate.
Taxpayers often subsidize infrastructure — roads, bridges, ports, rural broadband, community centers, etc. — that private companies can’t or won’t build on their own. That makes good sense.
But should an NFL stadium be considered one of those things? Did the Wilfs really have so little to gain financially from a new stadium that they needed massive taxpayer subsidies?
Vikings billionaire owner Zygi Wilf surveying the taxpayer gift that keeps on giving. (Photo credit: Star Tribune)
Every year, we’re learning a bit more about just how much the Wilfs gained from this new stadium. In 2005, the Wilfs paid about $600 million for the Vikings. The last time Forbes did its estimates, the Vikings were thought to be worth $3.93 billion.
To be sure, not all of this gain in team value is due to the stadium. But the stadium is certainly a substantial driver of increased valuation, and it’s never been more clear that NFL owners have more than enough financial wherewithal to fund their own revenue-generating assets.
By the way, the Wilfs’ money-making machine is just getting warmed up. Last weekend, St. Paul Pioneer Press sports Columnist Charlie Walters speculated that this year Forbes will say the Vikings are valued at around $4.5 billion, which is about 7.5 times more than what the Wilfs originally paid.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Legislature is struggling to come up with ways to fund basic life necessities for struggling low-income families, such as housing, nutrition, medical leave, child care, mental health care, health care, nursing home care, roads, and bridges.
In hot pursuit of the 2024 GOP vice presidential nomination, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is aggressively marketing herself as the creator of a conservative Canaan. With the help of overwhelming Republican majorities in the South Dakota State Legislature, Noem has been leading South Dakota into a race to the bottom on taxes, services, and tolerance.
SD Governor Noem, showing off the flame-thrower she got from her staff for a Christmas gift. (Photo Credit: Sioux Falls Argus Leader)
South Dakota is one of only nine states – Wyoming, Nevada, Alaska, Washington, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming and South Dakota — that doesn’t have a state income tax. This is a major reason why under-funded South Dakota ranks, to cite just a few examples, worst in the nation in teacher pay, 39th in internet access, and 49th in child wellness visits.
Meanwhile, Minnesota — a purple state neighboring scarlet red South Dakota — is becoming more progressive than ever. In 2011, Governor Mark Dayton raised taxes on the wealthy to put an end to chronic budget shortfalls that Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty used to cut state government services. Dayton’s successor Governor Tim Walz has used huge subsequent state budget surpluses to strengthen a broad array of popular state services. And after the Democrats surprisingly won razor-thin majorities in the Minnesota Legislature in 2022, Walz and Minnesota Democrats have been engaged in a bold, fast-paced drive to make Minnesota a much more progressive place.
This begs the question: Which state’s direction is better for delivering economic prosperity?
Noem has been persistently declaring her race-to-the-bottom approach to be the best path to overall economic prosperity.
“The last four years, we have made South Dakota the strongest state in America. We lead the nation in almost every single economic metric,” Noem claims.
Governor Noem says her policies are attracting “freedom-loving people from every corner of the country to move to South Dakota, join our record-breaking economy, and pursue their American Dream.”
At the same time, Minnesota and South Dakota Republicans have long insisted that DFL policies are scaring away people and killing Minnesota’s economy. For this reason, Walz’s Republican challenger in 2022, Dr. Scott Jensen, promised a set of very South Dakota-like policies, such as an elimination of Minnesota’s state income tax, which would have dramatically eroded Minnesota’s infrastructure and services.
As 2022 closed out, you can see from the above graphic that South Dakota was dead-last in the country in GDP growth, with our state’s economy contracting 4.3%. Yep, that would be minus 4.3%. By comparison, the rest of the country grew by 2.6%. The BEA graphic also starkly reveals South Dakota’s dead-last standing among our contiguous surrounding states.
This follows a steady, quarter-by-quarter contraction of South Dakota’s economy during 2022. During Q1, we were at -3.5%. During Q2, we were -1.7%. During Q3, we were -0.5% — all crowned, of course by the fourth quarter’s descent to -4.3%.
Each quarter’s performance significantly lagged the country overall and generally compared unfavorably with our contiguous neighbors.
To underscore our status as an economic laggard, BEA notes that South Dakota is one of only eight states that saw a decrease in its GDP for the entire year of 2022.
While the country overall prospered, albeit at a modest pace, we South Dakotans had our very own little homegrown recession.
A South Dakota recession? Worst in the region and nation? Who knew?
The emergence of the South Dakota recession ought to do at least two things. First, it should put an abrupt end to the Noem veep talk. Who wants the Governor with the worst economy in the nation on their ticket? Second, the South Dakota recession should discredit Minnesota Republicans who keep insisting that the surefire way to make Minnesota more prosperous is to imitate South Dakota’s fiscal race to the bottom.
Editor’s Note: The utterly disposable Homo sapien known as Joe Loveland has hereby been replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), Chat GPT to be precise. po The following was generated on Chat GPT with the human prompt “A humorous blog post about Republicans being wrong to oppose infrastructure spending.” Before generating the post, Chat GPT advised “As an AI language model, I do not take political sides or promote political bias. However, I can help you come up with a humorous blog post that highlights the importance of infrastructure spending.”
So, what do you think, dear readers?
— ChatGPT Overlords
Well, well, well, it looks like Minnesota Republicans are at it again, blocking infrastructure spending like they’re trying to win some kind of backwards competition. If there was a prize for being short-sighted and stubborn, they’d surely be in the running for the trophy.
I mean, come on, guys. Infrastructure spending is like investing in the foundation of your house. Sure, it’s not the most glamorous or exciting thing to spend money on, but without a solid foundation, the whole thing is going to come crumbling down eventually.
And let’s face it, Minnesota winters can be brutal. I’m pretty sure the roads here have more potholes than a slice of swiss cheese. If we don’t invest in repairing and maintaining our roads, we might as well just invest in a whole lot of new tires.
But maybe the Republicans have a different plan. Maybe they want us all to get around on dog sleds or something. Sure, it would be environmentally friendly, but I’m not sure how practical it would be for commuting to work or taking the kids to school.
And don’t even get me started on bridges. I mean, we’ve had some pretty high-profile bridge collapses in recent years. If we don’t invest in making sure our bridges are safe, we might as well all start practicing our swimming strokes.
So come on, Minnesota Republicans, let’s put aside our differences and agree on one thing: we need to invest in infrastructure. It’s not just good for our economy, it’s good for our safety and well-being. And who knows, maybe we’ll even get some new, exciting potholes to drive through.
I have a suggestion for the Lincoln Project, the much-celebrated organization formed by a collection of Never Trumper GOP and former GOP political consultants and activists who banded together in the 2020 presidential election cycle to help defeat Trump.
The Lincoln Project
If you haven’t heard of the Lincoln Project, starting in the 2020 election it raised money to air brutally pointed ads criticizing Trump. Liberals like me loved watching their ads, but I wasn’t convinced how effective they were.
While always cathartic for committed Trump opponents, the ads too often seemed to pick topics and a tone that they thought would get under Trump’s skin or raise money from Trump opponents, rather than topics and a tone that would prove most persuasive to the decisive right-leaning swing voters.
But overall, I don’t mean to criticize the Lincoln Project. Co-founded by recovering Republicans Rick Wilson and Reed Galen, it was well-intentioned and helpful. It produced a huge volume of ads and social media videos that were widely aired and shared. Those ads served as a primal scream for Republicans who had watched in horror as their party got hijacked by the most corrupt, inept, and bigoted president of our times. It “fired up the base,” which is one important need in any campaign. In the process, it developed a huge database of Trump opponents from across the ideological spectrum, which helped it raise over $80 million in the 2020 cycle.
A New Focus for Lincoln Project Money
But in 2024, more of this “singing to the choir” advertising isn’t the best way for the Lincoln Project to keep Donald Trump or his Mini Me Ron DeSantis out of power. Instead, the Lincoln Project should back a strong Republican running as a third-party candidate.
Such a right-leaning third-party candidate could serve as an Election Day safe haven for people who hate Trump or DeSantis, but will never be able to stomach voting for Biden, who has been a committed and effective champion for liberal causes.
If such a right-leaning third-party candidate could even draw 1 percent of the vote in 2024, that could be enough to keep Trump or DeSantis out of power. If the candidate could draw something like 10 percent, it could lead to the kind of landslide loss that could perhaps finally cause the party to jettison its Trumpian fetish, which is the Lincoln Project’s long-term goal.
Also, a conservative third-party candidate could completely or partially offset any otherwise-Biden votes that might be peeled away if a more left-leaning third-party candidate is on 2024 ballots, such as Andrew Yang. Yang is the businessman and 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate who left the Democratic Party to form the Forward Party. A third-party candidacy from the left without a counter-balancing third-party candidacy from the right could easily help Trump or DeSantis gain power.
Even a modestly successful conservative third-party candidate could swing the 2024 election. Keep in mind, Trump could have escaped defeat in 2020 if he had only gotten about 44,000 more votes in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. That is only about 0.08 percent of the 154.6 million people who voted for president in 2020. Those 44,000 votes wouldn’t have been enough for Trump to have overcome his 7 million popular vote loss, but because the United States is stuck with the profoundly undemocratic Electoral College system, it could have given Trump an Electoral College tie.
The ideal choice for a Lincoln Project-based third-party run is Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Cheney surname is well known, and she gained a great deal of national visibility and respect during the congressional January 6 insurrection investigation and hearings. She is the most well-known and politically talented of the Never Trumper elected officials.
Perhaps most importantly, Cheney has the background, knowledge, demeanor, and inclination to make an aggressive case against Trump that will connect with some right-leaning swing voters. When it comes to Trump, she clearly is not inclined to pull punches, and the news media covers what she has to say.
While Cheney is vehemently anti-Trump, with a voting record that aligned with Trump 91% of the time, she is not so moderate that she would tempt many liberals or left-leaning independents to vote for her instead of Biden.
One of the primary reasons running as a third-party candidate is so daunting is that it’s very challenging to raise enough money when not affiliated with one of the two major political parties. The Lincoln Project is the only Never Trump-oriented organization that can raise anything close to the amount of money it would take to help a Republican third-party candidate get onto state ballots and make sufficient amounts of noise. Again, the Lincoln Project raised $80 million in 2020, so it already has the donor database to raise a substantial sum in a hurry.
The Lincoln Project leadership should go all-in supporting a Cheney candidacy, whether as the Lincoln Project as currently constituted, or as Lincoln Project leaders disbanding and formally joining the Cheney campaign. Doing so would be a more effective way to keep Trump out of power than pumping more snarky Lincoln Project ads in an environment that will already be plenty thick with tough anti-Trump ads.
During Black Lives Matters’ (BLM) ten-year existence, many liberal and moderate codgers have been criticizing the movement’s “branding” and tactical approach.
Ruy Texiera from the American Enterprise Institute is among the more articulate of those critics. This is Texiera in The Economist, a long excerpt to illustrate just how snotty some of this liberal backlash has gotten:
The question of whether the pervasive push for wokeness in America has reached its apogee has different answers depending on where you look. My approach to answering it draws on the decades I have spent analysing American politics. Socially speaking, the peak was clearly attained during the summer of 2020, when no one outside of right-wing circles dared to dissent from the Black Lives Matter (blm) orthodoxy that quickly consumed the country’s discourse. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of police was the catalyst, but served as just one example of how black people were killed and oppressed every day, the victims of structural racism. America was a white-supremacist society, the narrative went; every white person was complicit in maintaining and benefiting from the system, and every American’s moral duty was to endorse this view. Knees were duly taken on sports pitches, black squares and other indications of blm support appeared in social-media profiles, and copies of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “How To Be an Anti-Racist” were dutifully purchased.
This was a moral panic. Progressive elites and their institutions rushed to embrace radical race essentialism—the idea that race is the primary driver of social inequality and that all whites should be viewed as privileged and all “people of colour” as oppressed—supported by millions of protesters who skewed educated, liberal and young. The violence that attended some of these protests was defended as the unavoidable cost of a righteous uprising.That it was mostly directed against property accumulated under white supremacy provided a ready-made moral justification.
At the same time, the slogan “defund the police” became popular in protest circles, linking the two messages in the nation’s consciousness. The woke view soon expanded far beyond opposing structural racism to envelop the entirety of identity politics—targeting ableism, sexism, transphobia and other forms of “intersectional” oppression that were presumed to be everywhere in America. Language policing, and self-policing, was rampant.
“Moral panic” indeed. This guy is a center-left pundit, not a Trumper, and he has plenty of company.
Some BLM critics misinterpret the BLM name, claiming it implies that other lives don’t matter. Others understand the intent of the name, but deem it too provocative and/or nuanced to be effective.
Many thought BLM was “divisive,” and lectured young activists to have more “unifying” messages. Lots of us, me included, grumbled about BLM’s more disruptive awareness-raising tactics, such as blocking traffic and kneeling peacefully during the playing of the national anthem at sporting events.
Many warned that Democrats’ support for the BLM movement would cause the party to look too radical and that would cause massive electoral losses that would hurt the BLM policy agenda.
I confess I was sometimes a critic and always a fretter. For instance, I wrote a cranky post about the Twin Cities Marathon route potentially being blocked.
In retrospect, I was wrong. I was correct that the provocativeness of the name and tactics undoubtedly did irritate many in my circles. But I have proven to be wrong about the long-term effectiveness of BLM’s approach.
Keep in mind the obvious: BLM’s goal wasn’t to keep privileged people like me comfortable. On the issue of police brutality and racism, its goal was to change hearts, minds, and policies. The goal of BLM’s provocative tactics was to ensure that Americans would stop shrugging off the police killings of George Floyd, Philando Castille, Freddie Gray, Breeona Taylor, and so many others, and the overall trend of police disproportionately killing black people.
On those measures, the only measures that really matter for people of color suffering police abuse, BLM has been a pretty spectacular success.
BLM’s Impressive Achievements
Instead of getting ignored by the public, media, and policymakers, like so many other progressive movements, BLM’s series of attention-grabbing actions changed public attitudes about police racism and brutality.
As the chart below shows, during the BLM era Americans” belief that black people receive unequal treatment from the police has increased significantly, despite aggressive, well-funded pushback by mostly conservative apologists of abusive policing.
Along with the change in attitudes about policing, support for a broad range of police reforms has won the support of a majority of Americans. When Gallup surveyed Americans about a dozen police reforms, only defunding, disarming, and abolishing the police are supported by fewer than 50% of Americans. Even among strong supporters of BLM, I’m guessing those things would probably poll poorly. But other major previously unthinkable reforms now have overwhelming public support. For instance, an impressive 92% of Americans want stronger policies to remove abusive police and 68% support ending “stop and frisk” practices.
These BLM-driven changes in attitudes have led to the passage of many police reforms. The National Conference on State Legislature reports that an astounding 300 police reform bills have been signed into law in the BLM era. Politicians noticed the BLM-driven change in public attitudes and acted accordingly.
Even President Biden, who was perhaps best known during his long U.S. Senate tenure for passing police-endorsed “tough on crime” legislation, signed an executive order enacting sweeping police reforms. Biden’s executive order mandates body-worn camera policies, bans chokeholds and carotid restraints, restricts the police use of military equipment, requires a number of constructive changes for police training, and creates a national database for tracking use-of-force incidents, among many other improvements.
Think about what a dramatic change in direction that is for Biden. Remarkable. Would it have happened without BLM shining the light on this issue?
In the wake of the weeks of massive BLM protests in the Twin Cities reacting to George Floyd’s murder by police officer Derek Chauvin, the Minnesota Legislature has also passed a number of police reforms. In 2020, a bipartisan bill was signed by Governor Walz that mandated officers to intervene when they become aware of misconduct, banned warrior-style training, and strengthened independent oversight of law enforcement.
Now that Republicans no longer control the Minnesota Senate, in the coming weeks Minnesota DFL legislators will attempt to pass additional police accountability reforms that Republicans blocked in 2020, such as ending qualified immunity so officers can be sued, banning no-knock search warrants, and extending the statute of limitations for people to bring a wrongful death lawsuit against officers.
Meanwhile, Democratic politicians listening to BLM on these reforms didn’t destroy their electability, as so many BLM critics promised would happen. In 2020, President Donald “when the looting starts the shooting starts” Trump was soundly defeated. The BLM-Critic-in-Chief lost the popular vote by the largest margin for an incumbent president with only one main opponent since Herbert Hoover.
In the 2022 mid-term elections, Democrats faced an incredibly heavily funded onslaught of ads falsely portraying their embrace of BLM-backed police reforms as being equivalent to the unpopular fringe call to “defund the police.” The Republicans could not have played that card more aggressively. Despite the wave of attacks, Democratic candidates did dramatically better than the historic trends suggested was possible.
My generation of progressives has given lip service to equality and civil rights. We assured everyone that we’re “color blind.” We wag our fingers when people make racist comments. We dutifully post our MLK quotes on MLK Day. Good for us.
But the reality is, those things didn’t change the day-to-day threat police brutality posed for black people. Our more genteel approach achieved nothing close to the impressive list of achievements being produced during the discomforting BLM era. Despite all of my generation’s carping about BLM from the sidelines, Black Lives Matter actually mattered.
Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins has been awarded the Bart Starr Award. The award is sponsored by the NFL and the Christian group Athletes in Action and honors “active NFL players who demonstrate outstanding character, integrity and leadership in their football careers and personal lives.”
What an utterly absurd choice.
Source: Vikings.com
Yes indeed, Kirk Cousins is “clean-cut.” He doesn’t swear much. He stays out of jail. He goes to church, and talks about his faith a lot. Good for him. If that is all there was to “character” and “integrity,” the Bart Starr award would make perfect sense.
But Cousins has also revealed a very selfish side, and that side can’t be ignored.
First, when COVID-19 was most dangerous because no vaccine or effective treatments had yet been developed, Cousins refused to mask and isolate. “If I die, I die,” the tough guy crowed. He thought it was all about him. Protecting vulnerable people all around him wasn’t on his radar.
Then, in the face of the worst pandemic in a century, a virus that has killed 6.86 million people worldwide,enough to fill the Vikings’ stadium about 94 times, Cousins refused to get a simple, safe, and effective COVID vaccine to protect his teammates, fans, and community from the deadly disease.
About 77% of Minnesotans got the life-protecting vaccine. About 95% of Cousins’ fellow NFL players did too. Nearly 100% of “NFL personnel” got it. But not the selfish, self-righteous Cousins.
The results were predictable. Cousins ultimately got infected, needlessly endangered others around him in the process, and wasn’t there for his team when it needed him. What a “team-first,” “high-character” guy.
Source: USA Today’s For the Win
The NFL didn’t seriously punish Cousins for his dangerous self-centeredness. Instead, it gave him its highest award for “character, integrity, and leadership.”
Keep in mind, players who use cannabis, an action that hurts no one, routinely get suspended and scolded by the NFL. Players who peacefully and silently protest racism and brutality during the National Anthem, which hurts no one and brings visibility to an important issue, get punished and scolded by the NFL. But players who knowingly put their teammates, fans, and community in grave danger get showered with praise for their character.
“To the degree of how one responds to the tragedies of life and what one does to make a positive difference in the lives of others serves as a true measure of character and achievement.”
Cousins recently lived through one of the most profound “tragedies of life” any of us have encountered. He lived through nearly seven million people suffocating to death because they got infected with a highly contagious virus. Once the COVID vaccine was developed, Cousins had his chance to “make a positive difference in the lives of others.” About 95% of NFL players passed their character test. Cousins failed his.
If you go to a legislative body, an academic institution, or a progressive rally these days, you will hear a lot of “BIPOC,” “LGBTQ+” and “Latinx” flying around. That might lead you to believe that maybe you should be shifting to use those terms, if you haven’t already. I’m not convinced.
Shifting to new terms is challenging and irksome for inflexible old dogs like me, but that’s not what is giving me pause. I’m very willing to adjust if need be.
The Golden Rule and common decency dictate that I call others whatever they prefer to be called. It’s not okay for me to stick with a term because it’s what I have always used in the past, or what strikes me as best. My preferences don’t matter; theirs do.
This leads me to this question: Are terms like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and Latinx that are embraced by many progressive elected officials, academics, and activists really what the affected folks prefer to be called? The question matters to me, both because I make an effort to avoid being an ass, and because I communicate for a living.
For me the metric to monitor here is not what activists, academics, and politicians say, but what surveys find the majority of the affected populations prefer we say. They’re not necessarily the same thing.
Gallup has consistently found that a relatively small slice prefers either “Black” (17%) or “African American” (17%), while by far the largest slice indicates that they don’t care (58%). Therefore, if you use either Black or African American, three-fourths (58% plus 17%) are content. When forced by the survey questionnaire to choose, a narrow plurality prefers to be called “Black” (52% prefer) over “African American” (44% prefer).
Gallup didn’t offer up BIPOC as an option. But only 6% of Black Americans indicated “other,” so there doesn’t seem to be a popular groundswell to be called BIPOC. Therefore, I use “Black” in most instances.
Similarly, 57% of surveyed Hispanic Americans indicated that it “does not matter” whether they are called “Hispanic (23% prefer),” “Latino (15% prefer),” or the more trendy gender-neutral term “Latinx (4% prefer).” When Hispanic American respondents are required to choose, 57% choose to be called “Hispanic,” 37% went with “Latino,” and 5% prefer “Latinx.”
Therefore, I go with “Hispanic,” not Latinx.
As far as I know, Gallop didn’t survey Native Americans, and I can’t find anyone who has. It would be helpful to know whether most prefer “Native American,” “American Indian,” “Indigenous American,” “Indigenous,” or something else. I want to get it right.
I also can’t find surveys of Americans who aren’t heterosexual about what they prefer to be called. That also would be instructive.
This issue gets most challenging when you need to use an umbrella term for many multiple groups, which is how we end up with well-intentioned acronyms such as BIPOC and LGBTQ+. But when some insist that the most inclusive alphabet soup be used in situations where it’s not really necessary, one side-effect is to wash out the individuality of each group in the acronym.
For instance, if some Indigenous folks people prefer to be called Indigenous rather than lumped into BIPOC, I could understand why. Acronyms can feel cold and overly formal.
Again, we need to be calling our friends, neighbors, and colleagues what they prefer to be called, not what we or a narrower band of vocal activists, academics, and politicians declare to be acceptable. That’s why these kinds of surveys matter to me. I hope we will see more of them. They identify societal consensus and give well-intentioned people defensible guidance for showing respect and avoiding corrosive battles. America needs that right now.
Elections in a purple state can give you whiplash.
After red wave elections, we’re led by Republicans like Tim Pawlenty who push for low taxes, poor services, and culture wars.
After blue wave elections, we’re led by DFLers like Tim Walz who push for higher taxes, better services, and cultural tolerance.
After elections with more mixed results, legislative stalemates cause us to keep the prevailing status quo frozen in place.
That makes every election cycle extremely consequential.
The South Dakota Vision for Minnesota
In 2022, a decidedly purple Minnesota – at the time, it was the only state in the nation with one chamber of the state Legislature controlled by Democrats and the other controlled by Republicans – held a particularly high-stakes election.
If Minnesota voters had elected ultra-conservative former physician gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen and a Republican Legislature dominated by far-right Trumpers, Minnesota would have become a conservative promised land, much like its neighbor to the west, South Dakota.
During the campaign, Jensen and other Republicans proposed a race-to-the-bottom on taxes, including eliminating the state income tax, which would have led to dramatically worse services. Republican spinmeisters prefer to say “smaller government,” but the reality is that it would have meant much worse services. The anti-vaxxer Doc Jensen also pledged a South Dakota-like war on public health and culture war initiatives to force conservatives’ thinking on gays, guns, God, and gynecology on all Minnesotans.
In other words, think Kristi Noem, with a stethoscope prop.
The Scandinavia Vision for Minnesota
Fortunately, 192,408 more Minnesotans voted for incumbent Governor Tim Walz than Jensen. More surprisingly, since it was predicted to be a historically horrible year for Democrats, Minnesotans also elected narrow DFL majorities in the state House and Senate. The all-important Senate majority is especially razor-thin at 34-33.
Walz and the DFL-controlled Legislatures are armed with a $17.5
billion budget surplus and are offering a vision that is more like a social democratic-led
Scandinavian country in the 1970s than South Dakota in the 2020s:
Paid family and medical leave;
An enormous funding increase for public schools;
A targeted child tax credit to dramatically reduce childhood poverty;
Down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, homelessness prevention, affordable housing, and rent vouchers;
A huge package to save the beleaguered childcare sector and make child care free for poor families and more affordable for middle-class families;
Large subsidies for weatherization, electric vehicle infrastructure, and solar energy expansion to combat climate change;
A range of gun violence prevention reforms, such as universal background checks, red flag laws to prevent people who could be perceived as a threat to themselves or others from getting guns, raising the legal age for obtaining military-style rifles to 21, and banning high-capacity magazines;
Enfranchising felons who have served their time; and
A capital gains tax hike for the wealthiest Minnesotans.
The list goes on. Overall, think Bernie Sanders, with a Fargo accent.
This is the most dramatic swing of state policy in my lifetime, and perhaps in the history of the state. And if somebody you may have never heard of, Judy Seeberger (DFL-Afton), had received just 322 fewer votes in her state Senate race, most of those changes would never have been possible. Without Seeberger’s handful of votes in the eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Minnesota would still be stuck in limbo between the South Dakota vision and the Scandinavia vision. 322 votes.
These days, there is a chorus of opining about the hellscape Minnesota will become when marijuana soon is legalized. Impaired driving! Health problems! Underage use! It’s starting to sound like a 2023 remake of the classic propaganda film “Reefer Madness.”
Though the concerns are exaggerated, they are valid. Yes, driving while stoned is dangerous and will increase. Yes, legalized marijuana products will fall into the hands of minors and that can be dangerous. Yes, marijuana use can be unhealthy, particularly for younger, developing brains.
At the same time, similar issues have long existed with already legal alcohol, and are often much worse than we’re seeing in the many states with legalized marijuana.
Impaired Driving. In 2017, 24,862 Minnesotans were arrested for driving while impaired. Most of those were abusing alcohol.
Underage Use. In 2011, a national found that 39 percent of high schoolers drank alcohol in the last 30 days, 22 percent binge drank, and 8 percent drove after drinking alcohol.
Health Problems. According to the Minnesota Department of Health, in 2020 alcohol contributed to 35,889 inpatient hospitalizations and 43,217 emergency room visits. Between 2015 and 2019, 2,151 alcohol-related deaths happened.
Despite these alarming alcohol-related statistics, I don’t know of a single supporter of marijuana prohibition who wants alcohol prohibition reinstated.
Many folks delivering red-faced warnings about the dangers of the devil weed have themselves used alcohol before it was legally permissible, made their health worse by drinking alcohol, and/or driven while impaired by alcohol use. Raise a glass to hypocrisy!
While marijuana use is vilified, particularly by older Minnesotans, about 59 percent of Minnesotans heedlessly use demonstrably dangerous and addictive alcohol products. And mainstream culture romanticizes and celebrates them.
As I’ve written here in the past, some of the marijuana tax revenue should be used to mitigate the impacts of expanded marijuana use, such as a public education campaign to warn people about the legitimate concerns about underage marijuana use, marijuana use for people with certain conditions, and driving while high on marijuana.
Those kinds of measures, not prohibition, are how we attempt to limit the downsides of alcohol use, and those measures, not prohibition, are how we should limit the downsides of marijuana abuse.
We are a free country that allows people to take risks. The risks associated with marijuana are not insignificant, but they pale compared to the risks alcohol users routinely take. That being the case, marijuana pearl-clutchers should shift from pushing to perpetuate the disastrous marijuana prohibition experiment to advocating for reasonable efforts to mitigate the harms of marijuana use.
Minnesota’s Social Security recipients don’t have bills for child care, which for infants in the Twin Cities metropolitan area child care center are averaging about $18,000 per year.
Most retirees no longer have to pay any of the costs for raising children, which averages about $233,610 per child, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Oh and by the way, that USDA figure is only until age 17. After that, many families face massive bills for public college tuition, books, and housing bills, which are averaging about $17,606 per year, per child. That expense is also in the rearview mirror of Social Security beneficiaries.
Keep in mind that many in this generation of young families facing those daunting expenses are also starting off life with huge student loan bills that dwarf what today’s retirees paid.
In the face of these figures showing the crushing expenses facing Minnesota’s young families, the Minnesota Legislature is fixated on a large $510 million tax cut for Social Security recipients.
As MinnPost explains, that cut won’t be helping the neediest Social Security beneficiaries. Low-income Minnesota retirees already pay no taxes on their benefits, as do many middle-income retirees.
That Senate research found people with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 a year would save an average of $733 per year. Those making more than $500,000 would save $2,397.
So why is the Minnesota Legislature considering putting the state’s wealthiest Social Security recipients at the top of its gift list? Because wealthy retirees need the help more than young families in their heaviest spending years? Nope.
Because retirees vote. According to U.S. News and World Report, in 2018 voter turnout for 18 to 24-year-olds was 30%. For voters over 65, turnout was more than twice as high at 64%. Politicians who want to hold on to power are all too aware of this fact. That’s a terrific political argument, but it’s a terrible equity argument.
If the Minnesota Legislature can find a way to finance universally accessible quality child care, adequate k-12 education funding, paid family and medical leave, low-income housing to address the homelessness crisis, enough food to help all hungry children, and significant public college tuition relief, maybe it can then find enough to help some more middle-income retirees. Maybe. But can we at least require Minnesota’s wealthiest Social Security recipients to pay their fair share for helping struggling young families and children?
Who stands in the way of the expansion of residential solar panel use? You’ve likely heard about politicians who are protecting the dirty fossil fuel special interests in order to tap into huge campaign contributions. And then there are the people who spread false information that solar is more expensive than fossil fuels or will deplete the sun’s energy.
But you might not have heard as much about the barriers Home Owners Associations (HOA) present.
Home Owners Associations — those earnest guardians of neighborhood uniformity, conformity, and banality — are a substantial barrier for those who want to use solar panels to cut their energy bills and/or reduce their impact on climate change.
Many HOAs have bylaws that directly or indirectly forbid the installation of rooftop solar panels. They apparently view solar panels as something that adds too much unsightly variation to their carefully planned cookie-cutter housing developments.
While solar panels are not works of art, they now blend in much better than in the past. We’re all much more accustomed to seeing them, and solar panel products are more attractive and unobtrusive than they used to be.
More importantly, the benefits of solar panel use — limiting catastrophic climate change and defraying significant household costs — greatly outweigh any slight aesthetic cost. It’s not a close call.
Still many HOAs are doing what they do, enforcing their rules. That’s substantially limiting the use of solar panels.
I have a personal story to illustrate how this works. For the first time in my life, I recently moved into a home governed by an HOA. Shortly after moving in, I emailed the HOA contact to ask if there are any limitations related to rooftop solar panels. (I should note that I had not yet secured the all-important spousal approval and appropriation, a daunting hurdle in itself, but I first wanted to see if this was even an option.)
The HOA contact swiftly emailed me to deliver a non-rejection rejection:
“…there are currently no specific restrictions on solar panel installations, other than they must not be visible from the public right-of-ways.”
About that “other than” clause: Since all pitched roofs are visible from public rights-of-way — streets, sidewalks, and alleys — the HOA is effectively telling me, in an indirect “Minnesota Nice” way, that there is no way in hell they are going to let me or anyone else install solar panels in their development. So, I dropped it.
“There are 7,780 HOAs in Minnesota. Roughly 1.52 million people in Minnesota live in HOA communities. 26.6% of Minnesotans live in HOA communities. 13.7% of Minnesota homeowners are part of HOAs. An estimated 583,462 homes in Minnesota are part of HOA communities.”
This is not just a “woke” liberal issue. Because homeowners with rooftop solar panels are saving thousands of dollars in energy bills, this is also a significant financial issue. It benefits the 20% of Americans who still somehow don’t believe climate change is happening, but want to save thousands of dollars in energy bills. Now that the price of solar energy systems has decreased significantly, and energy costs are skyrocketing, the payoff from solar panels has never been more lucrative.
I hope this is the year that Minnesota HOAs will be stopped from standing in the way of solar panel use. Over the last two years, Minnesota legislators considered a bipartisan bill authored by State Senator Karin Housley (R-Stillwater) and Representative Ami Wazlawik (DFL-White Bear Township) to regulate the HOA regulators. The Housley-Wazlawik bill would have allowed the HOA to impose limits, but the limits could not decrease production by more than 20%, or add more than $2,000 to the cost.
Since my HOA’s “not visible from the public right-of-ways” restrictions effectively decreased production for any pitch-roofed home near a street, sidewalk, or alley by 100%, it would seem to be an illegal restriction, if a bill like the Housley-Wazlawik bill passes.
With the Minnesota Senate controlled by Republicans during the 2020-2022 legislative sessions, the Housley-Wazlawik bill languished. Moreover, last year’s partisan-divided Legislature ended in a stalemate that left most business undone.
Now the Minnesota Senate, House, and Governor’s office will be controlled by DFLers. These are folks who promised on the campaign trail to address climate change and help Minnesotans “make ends meet” during a time of historically high inflation. Now they need to deliver on those promises. Therefore, it would sure seem that the legislation’s likelihood of passing have improved significantly. Here’s hoping.
Now, does anyone know a good lobbyist I can hire to persuade my wife?
Up until this weekend, I haven’t been much of a fan of Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen. But maybe I’ve been too hard on him. I wanted to give him credit for some really great work over the last few days.
I am sincerely grateful that Scott Jensen did DFL Governor Tim Walz a solid by holding a news conference that resulted in highlighting a credential that Walz too infrequently spotlights himself – the fact that Walz volunteered for National Guard service for 24 years.
By holding that news conference, Jensen arguably delivered better front-page PR for Walz than Walz’s PR staff ever has. In the process, Jensen exposed Walz’s opponent to be an incompetent hypocrite who refused to enlist as Walz did. I hope Walz sent Jensen a thank you note and some nice flowers.
Here’s hoping that Jensen will continue to similarly publicize other Walz achievements.
Perhaps Jensen could hold a news conference exposing the fact that Walz only dedicated himself to the noble public service career of public school teaching for part of his life, instead of his entire life.
Or Jensen could lambaste Walz for only coaching Mankato West High School to its first ever state football championship, while failing to win the championship every single year.
Maybe Jensen could publicly scold Walz for only being named Outstanding Young Nebraskan and Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year, while totally failing to win those honors in any other state.
Bring it on, Scott! With enemies like Scott Jensen, who needs friends?
Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen proposes to eliminate the state income tax. At first blush, that might sound good to inflation-weary taxpayers. But to balance the state budget, such a change would necessitate $15 billion per year in service cuts and/or increases in other types of more regressive taxes.
Quite irresponsibly, Jensen won’t say what services he would cut, or what taxes he would increase, to balance the state budget. But make no mistake, serious pain would result. Jensen’s plan would necessitate massive cuts in education and/or health care, and/or a huge increase in property taxes, or other types of taxes that are more regressive than the state income tax.
Shifting from the progressive state income tax to the regressive property tax is popular among the wealthiest Minnesotans, because that change would greatly benefit them. The progressive state income tax requires that the wealthiest Minnesotans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than is paid by the poorest Minnesotans. On the other hand, regressive property, sales, and/or excise taxes put more of a burden on lower-income Minnesotans compared to the wealthiest Minnesotans.
Wealthy doctors like Jensen, multi-millionaire professional athletes like his running mate Matt Birk, and the most financially privileged Minnesotans who disproportionately fund Republican candidates don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes. This is a political payoff to them.
Jensen’s proposal not only is a grossly inequitable giveaway to the wealthiest Minnesotans, it’s also dishonest. Jensen only discloses the benefits – no more income tax bill! – without disclosing the costs – crippling school cutbacks, slashed health care services for vulnerable Minnesotans, and/or crushing property tax increases. All of those costs are enormously unpopular with Minnesotans, so Scott Jensen simply refuses to answer that critical $15,000,000,0000 question.
Jensen isn’t explaining the downside of eliminating the state income tax, but reporters should be doing that. Unfortunately, it’s barely happening. Compared to heavy front page reporting on Walz’s actions related to a nonprofit fraud prosecution and the debate over the number of debates, this hugely consequential policy proposal has received relatively scant coverage.
One exception is the Minnesota Reformer. Though the Reformer has relatively light readership, it has done thoughtful and constructive reporting, such as this:
“Minnesota has a steeply progressive individual income tax, meaning households with higher incomes have a higher tax rate as a share of their income compared to lower income households. Eliminating individual income taxes would disproportionately burden low-income Minnesotans while giving huge tax cuts to the state’s wealthiest.
‘Progressive income taxes are integral to having budgets that can meet the needs of all citizens, and they’re also really important in ensuring racial and socioeconomic equity,’ said Neva Buktus, state policy analyst for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. ‘Eliminating the personal income tax would completely throw that out the window.’
Each year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy creates a ranking of state tax systems and how they foster income inequality.
The six least equitable in the U.S. are among the nine states with no individual income taxes. Minnesota’s progressive personal income tax makes it one of the least regressive in the country — 47th out of 50. That means our lowest income earners get a better deal than nearly every other American when it comes to state and local taxes.
‘If you’re going to eliminate the income tax, there’s no way to spin it. It disproportionately benefits the wealthiest Minnesotans by a long shot,’ Buktus said.”
At other major news outlets, my best guess is that reporters are shrugging off the issue relative to other issues because they believe that elimination of the state income tax could never pass the Legislature.
It’s not reporters’ jobs to gauge likelihood of passage. After all, no one knows what the future makeup of the Legislature might be if voters sweep Republicans into office, as historical trends portend. Instead, reporters are supposed to explain the candidates’ major policy proposals and analyze the consequences so voters can make fully informed decisions.
That’s just not happening as much as it should. Whatever the thinking in Twin Cities newsrooms about Jensen’s most radical and reckless policy proposal, their silence on the topic has been deafening.
In gridiron in terms, what I am about to say would be called
piling on. Many political writers nationwide have already weighed in on onetime
football star Herschel Walker’s U.S. Senate candidacy and his staggering lack
of qualification.
But I live in Athens, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia,
where Walker won a Heisman Trophy in 1982 and became a celebrity, a Peach State
icon, so here I go, jumping in. Throw a flag if you want.
If elected, Hush-uhl, as the good ol’ white alumni say,
would be biggest dunce in the Senate. Maybe ever.
His candidacy represents a new low for GOP cynicism and disregard
for the larger public good. Everybody knows he’s as ignorant as a tackling
dummy, but while Democrats and old-line Republicans find that alarming, the
MAGA wing of the Grand Old Party doesn’t care as long as Herschel can win and
flip the Senate red.
And he just might.
In November 2020, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, primary minister at Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church, once the home Dr. Martin Luther King, made history when he won a special election for the Senate seat opened by Republican Johnny Isakson’s early retirement for health reasons. Warnock narrowly beat a white, Republican woman, Kelly Loeffler, in a fierce, costly race to become Georgia’s first African-American Senator.
But the prize he won was only the remaining two years of
Issakson’s six-year term. Warnock is now running as an incumbent for his first
full term.
The GOP turned to its dirty trick playbook. The bosses know that Warnock, only 53, is not just one of the most charismatic Democrat to emerge since Barack Obama; they know he’s already making a mark in the Senate and that his national recognition is growing. So they didn’t bother with another white candidate. They embraced Walker, a pigskin superhero in a football-crazy state, a Donald Trump-defending (and endorsed) black celebrity who is acceptable to white conservatives and could very well peel off enough black votes to trim Warnock’s winning margin.
Walker is such a big deal in Georgia that his campaign signs don’t even show his last name. Like Prince and Adele, he’s mononymous: Herschel.
Photo by Noel Holston. Vandalism likely by the wind.
On the downside for Republicans, Walker has been accused of
domestic abuse by an ex-wife and has documented history of exaggeration and
fabrication with regard to his life and accomplishments. Here’s a man so
oblivious to his own prevarication that he has claimed to be valedictorian at
UGA when, in fact, he did not graduate. He left school early for the pros.
Walker has said things, not just unawares on hot mics but in
public forums, that make his backer Trump’s incoherent word salads sound like a
TED talk.
After the horrible school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, for
instance, Walker told an interviewer on Fox who asked about his views on gun
control, “Well, you know, it’s always been an issue…People see that it’s a
person wielding that weapon, you know, Cain killed Abel. And that’s the problem
that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those
things. You talk about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department
that can look at young men that’s looking at women, that’s looking at their
social media? What about doing that?”
At a campaign stop, Walker said, “Warnock, I remember hearing him
say, ‘America need to apologize for it whiteness.’ That’s not in a Bible I ever
read. Our Founding Fathers already apologized for its whiteness. Because if you
read the Constitution, it talks about every man being treated fair.”
I will wait while you, dear reader, scratch your head and try to
figure out what the heck any of that gibberish means. And it typical of what
Walker say.
This is why his campaign ads show him smiling his mega-watt
smile, running with a football, mingling with adoring fans and reading simple
sentences from a TelePrompter. It’s also why Walker’s handlers have so far
avoided even scheduling a debate with Warnock, much less putting him on a stage
with the vastly quicker minister. They know that in a clash of wits,
intelligence and knowledge, Warnock is the Heisman-quality talent and Walker is
a water ___.
You can fill in the blank. I won’t say the word because I am
white and might be accused of making a racist remark even though I am just
making another football analogy.
This, however, does underscore a serious potential flaw in the
GOP’s strategy, the other side of a double edge. Warnock can say things to and
about Walker that a white Democrat could not.
So far, though, Warnock has mostly stayed above the fray. TV ads
in which he’s featured on camera focus on who he is and things he’s already
accomplished, such fighting for help for American soldiers ill from burn-pit
exposure.
Warnock ads that don’t feature him hit Walker hard. One
spot, culled from a 2008 CNN interview, shows Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman,
tearfully claiming Walker put a pistol to her temple and threatened to blow her
brains out and, another time, threatened to cut her throat.
Walker hasn’t quite denied these allegations. He’s has, however,
attributed past misbehavior to his suffering from dissociative identity
disorder, or DID — what we used to call multiple personality disorder.
Comforting, no? I mean, we’re used to politicians being
two-faced, but Herschel may be taking us into Three Faces of Eve
territory. He could be a Sybil servant.
I am hoping and praying Georgians of the right-ish persuasion
have a come-to-reason moment and either stay home on election day or vote for
the preacher from the Savannah projects.
As for Herschel, well, I agree with what the Auburn cheerleaders
used to chant:
Push him back, push him back, waaaayy back.
Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He serves as Georgia Correspondent for Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (2000-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune (1986-2000). He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.
In the past, one thing that Democrats and Republicans could always agree on is that “cooperating with law enforcement” is a good thing. As near as I can tell at this stage, that’s what the Walz Administration and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison did when they learned of Covid relief funding being misused.
As an aside, this is much more than I can say about Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen who apparently has absolutely no problem with Governor Ron Desantis (R-FL) using millions of dollars Covid relief funds to shamelessly abuse vulnerable asylum-seekers for political purposes. The Washington Post reports:
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) appears to have turned to an unexpected funding source to help pay for his plans to fly migrants to liberal-leaning communities: the interest earned on his state’s federal coronavirus aid.
A little-noticed part of Florida’s recent budget dedicated about $12 million to the relocation campaign, an escalating effort that saw the state send two planes filled with dozens of migrants — children included — to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Wednesday.
When Republicans learned about DeSantis’s fraudulent use of Covid funds, they not only didn’t notify the FBI, they cheered on Desantis.
But I digress. Let’s recap the basics of what seems to have happened in the Minnesota case. When the Walz-appointed education officials suspected misuse of funds, they reported it to the FBI. They cooperated with law enforcement.
When the FBI reportedly asked the state education officials to not tip off the investigation by cutting off funds, the Walz education appointees and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s staff again cooperated with law enforcement. Pioneer Press:
“’The FBI repeatedly made it clear to the Attorney General’s Office and MDE that it should not disclose the existence of the investigation in Feeding Our Future’s state court lawsuit so that it could proceed without tipping off Feeding Our Future and the target of the investigation,’ Ellison’s office said Monday.”
(Note: At this point, the FBI can’t publicly verify that they asked the state officials to not cut off funding. As we’ve seen in dozens of cases over the years, the FBI won’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Still, there is no reason to believe that all of these state officials are lying, knowing full well that the FBI could eventually expose them as liars.)
Likewise, when the judge reportedly said that cutting off funds during the investigation could be a problem for the investigation, the education officials didn’t create such a problem for law enforcement. The Pioneer Press’s Dave Orrick explains:
Judge John Guthmann never ordered the state to make payments, according to the court record and Guthmann himself. However, he did, in at least one court hearing held over Zoom, tell an attorney for the state that they could have a “problem” if they didn’t keep making payments.
Why would the FBI not want the Walz Administration to immediately cut off funding? That’s a very fair question. But there is a perfectly reasonable answer. Former federal prosecutor and current University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler explains:
“Think about a drug network,” Osler, who prosecuted cocaine rings in Detroit, said in an interview with the Pioneer Press. “Often, if we want to take down an entire drug network, you have to wait. It’s better to take it down with the whole story known and the key players identified. … I think pretty much anyone who’s worked in law enforcement at a higher level will say that fast isn’t always good and sometimes you do need to hold.”
And yes, Osler said, speaking generally and with no direct knowledge of the Feeding Our Future investigation, that can included allowing money to keep going out the door to suspected criminals. “A lot of the time, that’s done with the confidence of trying to get the money back later, and they’ve begun that process,” he said.
Indeed, federal authorities have said that of at least $250 million they’ve alleged to have been stolen, they’ve recovered some $50 million.
Despite all of this, Walz’s increasingly desperate gubernatorial opponent Scott Jensen, who is consistently trailing the polls, wants to convince Minnesotans that this is the equivalent of the Teapot Dome scandal or, like, you know, “BENGHAZI!” or “HER EMAILS!”
But to me it looks like, yawn, Walz’s education appointees “cooperating with law enforcement” to do what they were told to do in order to prosecute some pretty extensive fraud that they initially uncovered.
As such, the Walz Administration deserve praise, not punishment.
Though Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen told anti-choice extremists that he would work to ban abortion, he has since been busily telling more moderate general election voters that he can’t, due to a Minnesota Supreme Court Ruling which held that the Minnesota Constitution guarantees a right to get an abortion.
But here’s how quickly Minnesota’s current reproductive health care protections can disappear.
Step One: A few weeks from now, Minnesota voters elect Jensen and a GOP Legislature.
Step Two: The GOP majority appoints anti-abortion judges, who overrule the state constitutional right to abortion at the first opportunity.
Step Three: Republicans enact legislation banning abortion, which the far-right U.S. Supreme Court now empowers states to do.
Bam, reproductive health freedom could be gone in Minnesota that quickly.
If you think it can’t happen, look no further than Iowa. Planned Parenthood’s Tim Stanley explains in the Minnesota Reformer:
Much like current abortion protections in Minnesota, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that “a woman’s right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution.”
Reynolds and her predecessor have appointed five Supreme Court justices, building a strong conservative majority on the bench.
Fast forward to June 2022, the Iowa Supreme Court didn’t think twice about “stare decisis,” fulfilling the role they were put there to do: They overturned past judicial precedents and reversed the decision that purported to secure a right to abortion in the state constitution.
Now, with nothing protecting abortion in Iowa, the Iowa Legislature can completely ban abortion, which it is unfortunately expected to do.
As the Iowa example clearly proves, an abortion ban is on the ballot in Minnesota. Elect Republicans and it will happen pretty quickly.
