Category: John Kline

Note: This is a counterpoint piece that was sent to me by a friend of mine who is involved with the Dan Powers campaign. It is offered here in its entirety. -- Dave M.

By Paul Hoffinger

I think it was Fox News-style journalism at the Strib that contributed to its attempt to slam Dan Powers. Many otherwise liberal people are apparently either unaware of the paper's descent into yellow, muckraking journalism over the last couple years, or willing to give the paper a pass out of ill-advised nostalgia.

Plain and simple, one of the rats I smell behind the hatchet-job on Dan Powers, is the Strib's membership in the now virtually total, corporate media. Hemorrhaging dollars and red ink, the paper is a propaganda appendage of the right-wing nuts that own it.

Dan Powers is what he says he is: a south metro business owner, who has had difficulties with the economy that George W. Bush damaged. Other small business owners, and most of us, have had some similar difficulties with it.

Even the Strib acknowledged that Dan worked on his pool heating business in 2009, while he was collecting unemployment benefits. This sounds like the actions of a prudent businessman. Had anybody accepted one of his bids, he would have had to stop collecting. Should he not call himself a contractor because nobody accepted one of his bids? Must we assume lack of full disclosure if he hasn't had a bid accepted? I think we are too conveniently anxious to think we have been duped, and more than that, I think we are too easily used by a corporate media organ that employs innuendo to try to damage our DFL candidates.

If Dan was a Republican in the past, I know some outstanding DFL legislators who were too, so he's in good company. I don't think we should require a political pedigree to be a party leader. About his unemployment benefits, as a laid-off roofing company employee while also a pool-heating contractor, he was eligible for unemployment, [which is] unavailable to non-employees or independent contractors providing services to a business.

Warnings about circular firing squads are useful to heed at this time. We might well avoid damaging a candidate's chances by blindly believing everything we read in right-wing newspapers. The political news gods under the paper's neo-con owners have gone to great lengths to paint Dan Powers negatively, while they pointedly ignore Kline's pathetic excuses for not supporting child nutrition. Just like their heroes at good ol' fair-and-balanced Fox News.

Dan Powers is a powerful candidate, strong on the issues. He leads potent discussions about jobs and the economy, global warming and green employment, health care, tax justice, education, and has a wealth of personal experience and research in those fields. Ask anybody who's been in a parade with him in the last couple months. He's a great candidate, and a world of threat to John Kline and the fat cats that own Kline! He is actually doing the work to win this race without waiting for redistricting in two years. [Let's not hobble him now to placate the wing-nuts at the Star Tribune.]

The incumbent from the party of "no" would like to run away from Dan Powers, the better to conserve the hefty campaign war-chest Kline has amassed from the likes of Tom DeLay, Big Oil and other Texas and corporate friends. The incumbent's public comment about the high cost to taxpayers of child nutrition programs is something worth being distracted from. So, his oily friends at the Star Tribune come out high profile with their num-chuks and spin-knives against the likely DFL heir-apparent.

Yukkk, how greasy! I bet they're even using some of that emulsifier/ surfactant that BP spread in the Gulf.

Category: Tim Pawlenty

by Alan Anderson

Governor Pawlenty, on a tour of Iraq this week, told reporters that he “sees dramatic progress in Iraq stability. I’m getting a hopeful and optimistic impression.” Really? Rather than do “visits” to places (where I am sure he is kept away from the violence) he ought to read other accounts of what is happening.

For example, in the same paper reporting his optimism, there is a report that 15 people were killed in the Diyala Province in a car bombing. It was the third fatal bombing this week in that area. One U.S. troop was also mortally wounded. Nine people were killed on July 16, and although the level of killing has dropped significantly since the high marks in 2007, it is estimated that more than 2400 civilians have been killed in the first six months of this year.

Add them to the estimated 100,000 to half a million civilians killed in the war, the 2 million people who have fled the country, the 4400 + U.S. troops killed in the war, the 55,000 “enemy combatants” and you have nothing but a full-fledged disaster. It is especially galling since the war was unnecessary and has continued to be bungled in its management. U.S taxpayers have shelled out almost a trillion dollars for this effort and the costs will continue to escalate as almost 30% or more of our returning troops have forms of mental anguish and illness, to say nothing of the more than 30,000 who have been wounded. More than $10 billion is unaccounted for and $3.2 billion of Halliburton’s $20 billion in fees have been questionable expenses.

Nice that the Governor is “hopefully optimistic” about the future. He ought to be overwhelmingly saddened by the past and realize that the problems of the country still persist. It is time to close this horrible chapter in American history. We are experiencing record deficits and record unemployment…..it is time to invest our money in our own future and meet our own needs first.

Category: Al Franken

by Alan Anderson

Governor Pawlenty and conservative interest group Minnesota Majority are now claiming that 1000 felons voted in the 2008 senatorial election and could have tipped the scales back to Coleman. They want an investigation. In the mean time, many of the disputed ballots are being found to be cast by individuals who were no longer ineligible to vote….they had served their time and were again able to cast a ballot. It is 2010…..it is time to put this close election behind us. Please.

And if anyone wants to complain about disputed elections, then Democrats can always bring up the disputed 2000 election. The stakes were higher….the presidency of the United States. In that election Mr. Gore won the popular vote by almost 540,000. That total is undisputed.

The problems in Florida, which gave Mr. Bush the necessary numbers to win the Electoral College vote by 5, were made worse when the Supreme Court, in Bush vs. Gore, said the uneven standards for the recount would do “irreparable damage” to Mr. Bush. In what some would consider one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever, the most activist intervention of the Court in American politics, a conservative Court chose to override the Florida Supreme Court and stop the recount. This clearly should have never happened. Conservatives have always supported states rights…especially against federal intervention. Except in this case, when they could hand the presidency of the United States to their political party. None of the conservative justices chose to recuse themselves, even though members of their family worked for the Bush campaign.

Reviews of the ballots were inconclusive. Some revealed that Bush would have won if only the four disputed counties in the court case were reviewed. Had there been a statewide recount, as was done in Minnesota, there is a strong likelihood that Gore would have won. Physically reviewing each ballot indicated that many of the discrepancies could have been discerned.

Most troubling of all the issues in the Florida election were the patterns discovered in voter trends. For example, ballots were rejected in counties where there were large majorities of Blacks, Hispanics, and older Floridians. Three times as many ballots in minority communities were rejected, compared to predominantly white areas. And clearly over-count ballots that were rejected were heavily cast for Gore. A NY Times article (Nov 12, 2001) suggested that of 113,000 over-vote ballots reviewed, 75,000 were cast for Gore and a minor candidate, whereas 28,000 chose Bush and a minor candidate. A hand count could have changed the outcome.

The worst part of the whole story in terms of American history is what happened as a result of this “appointment” by the Supreme Court. There probably would have not been a 9/11, there wouldn’t have been an Iraq war, there wouldn’t have been a huge tax cut for the rich (coupled with relaxed oversight of Wall Street and oil businesses) that caused the greatest recession since the Great Depression, there wouldn’t have been a Roberts Supreme Court that unleashed corporate money into the political arena, there wouldn’t have been a prolonged Afghan war, there wouldn’t have been torture, there wouldn’t have been 6000 American soldiers killed, there wouldn’t have been millions displaced and more than 500,000 civilians killed in Iraq, and perhaps there wouldn’t be the political polarization that we find in today’s social climate.