About Joe Loveland

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.

The Father, the Son, and the Wholly Gross

By guest columnist Noel Holston

So, the same God that sent us Jesus also sent us Donald Trump?

Image from Daily Kos

I guess that’s possible seeing as how the same God gifted us with sex and STDs, but I doubt it.

Saying Donald Trump isn’t a “perfect” man is a huge understatement, like saying DDT isn’t the best of condiments.

I, Noel Holston, am not a perfect man. I sometimes talk when I should be listening. I’m bad about leaving the toilet seat up.  I’ve been known to tithe less than 10%.  I once stole a pair of sunglasses from a surf shop in Daytona Beach. 

I regret it all.

But unlike Donald Trump, who regrets nothing, I’ve never sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room, mocked a disabled man’s tremors, lied on loan applications, stiffed a contractor, or paid hush money to a porn actress. I’ve also never been sued or charged with any crime, let alone 90. 

No, Trump is not a perfect man. He’s more like a perfect storm, a monsoon of malfeasance.

But that’s not the truly disturbing thing about the meme reproduced above. We know who Trump is.

The meme was shared on Facebook by a woman from my Mississippi hometown, someone who also posts pictures of angels and kittens, and it quickly amassed a long trail of supportive comments, from anti-Liberal slurs to “Some time we need a Joab.”

(For those of you who aren’t ready to compete on Bible Baffle, Joab was a Jewish military commander under King David known for his ruthlessness.) 

The scary thing is that there are people living among us who actually believe Donald Trump was chosen by the Almighty Himself to clean up the sinful mess that liberals, progressives and free-thinkers supposedly have wrought in the U.S. of A. 

Here again, the logic is strange.

God loved and blessed America when European conquerors, also known as settlers, drove indigenous peoples off their lands and killed them by the thousands.

God continued to love and bless America when some of its enterprising newcomers used abducted Africans to build great fortunes and, later, after a bloody war incidentally freed those slaves, disenfranchised, harassed and lynched their descendants for another century.

Only now, when some men and women want to love someone of their same gender, when some men and women want to change their gender, and when poor brown people from Central and South America are trying to cross our border Southern to pursue life, liberty and happiness is God so infuriated with us that He has dispatched a snide, vulgar, narcissistic real-estate hustler to lead us back to the straight and narrow.

There’s a word for this: insanity.

There’s a second word as well: blasphemy. 

Forgive them for they know not what they do? Sure. It’s the Christian thing. 

But not until after you’ve voted them and their orange idol out.

Author’s note: I had hoped to work Matthew 9: 26 (“There are none so blind. . .”) into this, but it broke the flow. Another time.


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.

Lobbyists’ Whining Shows Why A Public Option in MN Is So Necessary

An independent analysis released this week by the Minnesota Department of Commerce found that up to 151,000 Minnesotans could be helped if the Minnesota Legislature gives health insurance consumers of any income level the option of buying into the public MinnesotaCare health insurance plan. MinnesotaCare has been operated by the Minnesota Department of Human Services since 1992 but has only been available to about 83,000 people who make too much to qualify for Medical Assistance (Minnesota’s Medicaid program) but earn less than 200% of the federal poverty level.

The Commonwealth Fund explains what little is known about the MinnesotaCare buy-in option proposal that will be considered by the Minnesota Legislature in the coming months:

Minnesota is also considering a buy-in option but is focusing on expanding MinnesotaCare, the state’s Basic Health Program. The Basic Health Program was created by the Affordable Care Act and allows states to leverage federal financial assistance typically used to subsidize private insurance purchased through health insurance marketplaces to instead fund a state coverage program for individuals with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. MinnesotaCare and the state’s Medicaid program are run by the same agency; MinnesotaCare provides more generous benefits than marketplace coverage at lower premiums. The state’s recently enacted law allows the state to study and pursue different public option models in addition to the MinnesotaCare buy-in.

As the Legislature prepares to debate this issue in coming months, lobbyists for insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals are howling, which confirms to me that the Legislature is on the right track. 

Hospital and doctor lobbyists are predictably complaining that they will get reimbursed less by MinnesotaCare for medical services.  Health insurance lobbyists are predictably complaining that they will earn less by being forced to compete with MinnesotaCare.

I don’t doubt that what the lobbyists are saying is true. But their complaints should lead Minnesota legislators to ask themselves this key question: How can we possibly make insurance more affordable for struggling consumers if doctors, hospitals and insurance companies don’t get paid less?

We can’t.

If medical industry lobbyists lose on this, ordinary Minnesota insurance customers will win. It’s pretty clear that hospital executives, specialty doctors, and health insurance company executives are in a better position to make do with a little bit less money than 300,000 uninsured Minnesotans who are just one injury or illness away from medical bankruptcy or going without life-saving care.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, health insurance consumers are winning in Washington and Colorado, states that have already gone down this public option road:

“Washington and Colorado, which have operational programs, are seeing incremental progress. In Washington, public option plan rates will increase in 2024, but at a slower pace than non-public option plans (+5% compared to +8%). Similar to this past year, in 2024 they are expected to be the lowest-cost silver plan in most counties (to which premium tax credits are pegged). Public option plans will be offered in 37 of 39 counties, up from 34 in 2023.

Despite opposition from the insurer and provider communities, the Colorado Option program has generated savings for consumers while offering more comprehensive benefits and increasing transparency around health insurance premiums and provider reimbursement rates. Requested increases for Colorado Option plans were more than 30 percent lower than non-Option plans and, following the state’s subsequent rate review and hearing processes, the state announced that 25 individual market and 24 small-group market Colorado Option plans will meet the state’s target of a 10 percent reduction in premiums compared to 2021 levels. The federal government also recently affirmed that the program is expected to generate savings from reductions in plan premiums.”

That’s very encouraging progress. It’s not a cure-all, but it is progress.

Do Minnesota legislators care more about the financial bottom line of insurance companies, hospital companies, and specialty doctors than they do about the pocketbooks of Minnesotans struggling to afford health protections? In the coming weeks, we will find out.

Five Things That Should Keep Trump Up At Night

Politically speaking, Trump has a lot going for him. Very early in the primary season, he is the runaway front-runner for the GOP nomination.  Wrapping this up early will save him a lot of money and allow him to aim resources at Biden, instead of at his fellow Republicans.

He is battle-hardened. He has already endured dozens of serious scandals that would have ended most candidacies – two impeachments, 91 criminal indictments, a videotaped incitement of insurrection, the “grab em by the” lady bits tape, dozens of embarrassing gaffes, a porn star hush money conviction, a sexual abuse conviction, popular vote losses in 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2023, etc. 

Despite all of those calamities and more, Trump somehow still has around 35-ish percent of voters consistently enthusiastic about him and another 15-ish percent of voters who currently seem willing to hold their noses and vote for him.

After all of that, it’s difficult to imagine what could cause Trump to lose much electoral ground in the next 10 months.

Moreover, Trump has the good fortune to be running against a politically wounded, gaffe-prone octogenarian who has had to endure post-pandemic economic headwinds throughout his term.

Add to that the very real possibility of a third-party candidate siphoning off anti-Trump voters from Biden, and it can’t be denied that Trump has one hell of a strong political hand. At this stage, he should be considered the favorite to win in November.

But if I were on Team Trump, these are five challenges that especially would concern me.

Surviving a Conviction(s)

A major conviction, especially on the insurrection-related charges, could weaken Trump with a block of undecided voters. The Washington Post recently reported:

“…election-day surveys showed 31 percent of Iowa caucus-goers and 42 percent of New Hampshire GOP primary voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime.

Those are big scary numbers, but I would add two caveats to them: First, with an army of Trump lawyers trying everything possible to delay proceedings, it’s going to be very challenging for prosecutors to get a conviction and subsequent appeals completed before the November election.

Second, I’d be surprised if even one-quarter of those people who today say a conviction would be a deal breaker for them would actually abandon Trump. After hearing Trump and his supporters endlessly claim how the conviction(s) was the product of a politically motivated witch hunt, I think many cynics will agree with that cynical argument.

Still, if even a relatively small fraction of that large block of conviction-sensitive voters abandon Trump because of a conviction(s), that could be decisive in a close general election.

Moving Beyond “The Base”

Also, Trump is currently weak with swing voters. While much is made of how loyal Trump’s base is, once the primaries are over the MAGA base is not anywhere near large enough to give Trump a general election win.  He needs to win over the non-affiliated independents, soft Democrats, and soft Republicans who will decide this election. Like Biden, Trump has a lot of work to do to win over those voters.

Trump should be very worried about his poor showing with independents so far. MSNBC’s data geek Steve Kornacki noted a remarkable 71-point difference between how New Hampshire independents voted for Haley by 21 points compared to how the state’s Republicans voted for Trump by 50 points.

Fox News exit polls in New Hampshire found that 35% of GOP vote primary participants, many of whom were independents, indicated they would be so dissatisfied if Trump won the Republican nomination that they wouldn’t vote for him.

Again, if even a fraction of that holds in November, that could seriously hurt Trump’s chances in battleground states.

The Economy, Stupid

Then there is the economy. The state of the economy has traditionally been very important to swing voters – independents, soft Republicans, and soft Democrats.  Up until now, that has helped Trump pull ahead in the polls.

But as pandemic-related economic challenges have eased, the economy under Biden has very quietly gotten robust – historically low unemployment, consistent economic growth, much lower inflation than earlier, interest rate decreases likely on the way, a historic boom for the stock market/retirement funds, wage growth outpacing inflation, and, at long last, increasing consumer confidence.  The United States under Biden has the strongest post-pandemic economic recovery in the world.

Even if that good economic news only neutralizes the enormous past advantage Trump enjoyed on this issue, rather than turning it into a strength for Biden, that could help Biden win over persuadable swing voters.

Doh! Roe!

Trump also continues to face tricky political winds related to abortion rights. Surveys show that two-thirds of Americans think the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision that kept abortion legal and safe was a mistake. Meanwhile, Trump is out there telling anyone who will listen that “I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade.”  That’s music to Democrats’ ears.

The 2022 elections showed how much Republicans’ post-Dobbs abortion bans have hurt Republicans, particularly in suburban battlegrounds where battleground state elections are often decided.

Now congressional Republicans are promising a national abortion ban. That just adds fuel to this fire.

That would also worry me a lot if I was a Trump supporter.

Trump Being Trump

Getting voted out of the White House and kicked off Twitter has made Trump’s outrageous behavior a bit less visible than it was when he had the presidential bully pulpit. To the extent that Trump has been visible, a lot of the news coverage has been focused on how resilient he remains with the relatively narrow band of Americans who make up his political base. That success appealing to Republicans has made Trump look, up until now, relatively strong and normal.

But in a general election campaign, Trump’s steady stream of outrageous comments and actions will once again be more visible. Trump can’t keep himself from sounding childish, bigoted, incoherent, unstable, and dictatorial. That persona led Trump to lose the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020.

Highly visible “Trump being Trump” news coverage is great for Trump when the task at hand is appealing to the Republican base. But a constant stream of Trump outrageousness doesn’t always help him with more moderate swing voters. Moreover, his undisciplined stream-of-conscious blathering keeps him from repeating the most persuasive anti-Biden messages and pro-Republican messages.

Again, Trump is far from politically weak. He is rightfully favored to win in November. But if I were a Trump operative, these are five things that would certainly keep me up at night.

MN Republicans Rally Around the (Racist) Flag

In 2023, DFLers in the Minnesota Legislature passed a staggering amount of significant policies to help parents, children, students, women, people of color, seniors, taxpayers, voters, and workers. In 2024, it’s time for Republicans to show what they’ve got.  Up until now, they haven’t had much of a policy agenda, other than opposing all of the aforementioned DFL improvements and trying to cut taxes for the wealthiest seniors.

But buckle up, because Minnesota Republicans have a hot new culture war issue to promote. State flag preservation, baby!

Minnesota Republicans are promising to fight like hell to preserve the current Minnesota state flag. You know, the one with the jumbled seal that looks like several other state flags. The one that is impossible to discern at a distance. The one that has long been seen by indigenous people as celebrating their subjugation and genocide. Republicans love that sucker!

The University of Minnesota’s Bill Lendeke explains the troubling origin story of the current flag, which features a picture of a white pioneer plowing a field with a rifle next to him while a Native American rides away with the sun setting:

The (state flag) designer’s wife, Mary Eastman, even penned a short poem to explain what was on the seal:

Give way, give way, young warrior,
Thou and thy steed give way;
Rest not, though lingers on the hills
The red sun’s parting ray.
The rock bluff and prairie land
The white man claims them now

Eastman’s rhyme has the benefit of honestly reflecting the dominant feelings of white Minnesotans at the time, most of whom wanted to eradicate Native Americans from their homeland. As such, the seal and flag represent sentiments that led directly to the genocide of Dakota people, and is one that Minnesotans should not celebrate in any way.

Despite this dark history, Republicans seem to see themselves as fighting to preserve a righteous flag, not unlike the brave soldiers at Iwa Jima in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photo.

The state Republican Party even created a Save The Flag website to hock sweet t-shirts suitable for MAGA rallies.

Needless to say, Republicans look nearly as ugly in this fight as when they fight to preserve statues celebrating white supremacists such as Nathan Bedford Forest, Robert E. Lee, and John C. Calhoun.

To be clear, no flag redesign was ever going to be universally loved. When it comes to matters of design, everyone has different tastes and biases. And plenty of folks who preferred one of the other more than 2,600 designs considered by the State Emblems Redesign Commission are understandably still feeling tender.

But most of us who didn’t get our top choices respect the process and don’t throw a hissy fit over it

Given that we’re never going to have a unanimous opinion on flags, we have to look at the big picture: The current flag celebrates race-based dominance, and that’s just not ok. Beyond that, flag design experts have long said that Minnesota has one of the very worst state flag designs.

The Commission’s recommended design fixes both of those problems.

Ted Kaye, who wrote the 2006 guidebook “‘Good’ Flag, ‘Bad’ Flag,” gave Minnesota’s new design an “A” and called it excellent.

“You can’t make everybody happy, but Minnesota will come to be extremely proud of this flag,” said Kaye, secretary of the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA). “The state has seized a wonderful opportunity to improve its symbolism.”

He said he believes it would rank in the top 10 among the states and provinces of the United States and Canada were NAVA members and the public to be surveyed.

I hope the Minnesota Legislature doesn’t waste much time on the state flag debate. It’s clear what it should do.

The Commission went through a painstakingly thorough and thoughtful process, so the Legislature should quickly, decisively, and proudly approve the recommended new state flag. It is a huge improvement over the ugly — in so many ways — flag that has been poorly representing Minnesota for far too long.

Why, Dean, Why?

What to do when you spend millions of your own money, get less than 20% of the votes, and get creamed by a guy whose name didn’t even appear on the ballot?

Photo by Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune

Declare that you won and the actual winner is hopelessly weak!

“We just earned 20% tonight and no one knew who we were!”

Enough said. The absurdity of it all speaks for itself.

The First Leg of My EV Journey

I’ve driven gas-electric hybrids for 20 years, but I wanted to step up my environmental game. I thought I’d share the basics of that journey towards increasing electrification, since others may be pondering the same.

My first choice for a new vehicle was a Toyota Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) that uses 100% electric over the first 40-ish miles and then automatically switches over to the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine (ICE) after that. Since the U.S. Department of Transportation finds that 95% of trips are less than 35 miles, that seemed like a sensible bridge vehicle to use while the charging infrastructure and EV battery technology improved.

However, after spending two years on a Prime waitlist, I got impatient and somewhat impulsively bought a 100% electric Chevy Bolt EV instead.

The Bolt’s battery pack has an EPA-rated 247-mile range. Though the range is much lower in the winter, even winter ranges easily cover the way I use my car over 99% of the time. It’s very feasilble to go further by refueling at the fast-growing number of public charging stations, but for the other 1% of trips we also do have an ICE-powered vehicle in reserve.

For what it’s worth these are some of my initial impressions of EV life.

While the Bolt is much cheaper (MSRP ~$30,000 with generous tax credits available to many) and much more utilitarian than the Prius and other high-end EVs, it’s easily the smoothest, quietest, and most technologically sophisticated vehicle I’ve driven. I’m not a car enthusiast, but I look forward to driving my Bolt. While many people I know seem to assume EVs will have worse driving performance than ICE vehicles, I’m finding the opposite to be true.

It’s also cool to never again have to do things like add gas, oil, transmission fluid, sparkplugs, fuel filters, and coolant, or make other repairs associated with ICE cars powered by thousands of recurrent explosions. Brakes also last much longer because one-pedal driving has the engine doing much more of the braking, which also regenerates free electricity to slightly extend the range.

I’m not one of those guys who meticulously calculates the cost of electric charging versus the cost of putting gas in the car, but the federal government calculates that the average 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV user will save about $5,000 in fuel costs over 5 years. I tend to keep cars a lot longer than 5 years (current car is 14 years old), so that benefit will grow over time.

Environmentally, it’s not perfect, because Minnesota has a lot of coal fueling its grid. But that is changing rapidly as Minnesota moves to sunset coal use by 2035. Still, the Bolt has a 10 out 10 EPA rating for greenhouse gas emissions and is rated at 115 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe), which measures the efficiency of vehicles that run on non-liquid fuels.

Charging is truly easy. The vehicle comes with a Level 1 charger that you can plug into a regular three-prong household outlet. A Level 1 charger is the slowest kind of charger, delivering about 4 miles of additional range per hour of charging, or about 96 hours per day. That’s mighty pokey compared to other types of chargers, but a lot of people who don’t drive far or often could get by with it. In my dotage, I probably could.

For a couple grand, minus a nice rebate from my utility company, I put in a Level 2 charger in my garage. The Level 2 delivers about 25 miles of range per hour.  With that, I can easily fully charge a nearly empty battery overnight with cheaper off-peak power rates. So, I start every day with a “full tank,” though “full” is a very complex concept among the legions of EV techno-geeks.

When making longer trips, I’ll use Level 3 chargers at public stations, which deliver about 200 miles of range per hour of charging. That leads to a longer re-fueling stop than I made with my ICE vehicle at gas station. But by the time I take care of my biological needs, appetite, and smartphone addiction, I don’t think that an hour will be so onerous. And again, for the vast majority of my trips I’m only charging in my garage, where there is no waiting for refueling.

Beyond installing a charger, life with an EV truly isn’t that much different than life with an ICE vehicle.

Except for all of the questions I am fielding. That’s definitely different.

You don’t need to become an EV expert to own and operate an EV. EV enthusiasts inhabiting online EV discussion sites can make EV operation seem like quantum physics, but the truth is that you can ignore that level of complexity if you’re not interested in deep analysis of all things EV. And I most assuredly am not interested.

However, you do have to become somewhat of an expert to endure the endless questioning you get from the genuinely curious to the shockingly hostile. “Aren’t you worried that thing will start your house on fire?” “Don’t you know EVs are actually worse for the environment?” “Why get it when gas prices are low now?” “Why not wait for the next generation of improved technology?” “Aren’t you worried about getting stranded?” “Oh, so you’re better than us now?” “How can you afford that?” “Oh now I suppose you’re going to be That Guy who never shuts up about your precious EV?” “Doesn’t range decrease in cold weather?” “What did you pay for X, Y, and Z (EV-specific things)?” “Aren’t EVs going to overwhelm the grid we depend on for our homes?”

That constant barrage of questioning definitely does get tiresome. But so far, that’s the only part of EV life that I dislike.

MN GOP Running Again on Taxes? Yes, Please!

Minnesota Republicans think they have found a golden issue to run on in 2024. In the 2022 elections, campaigning on interfering with women’s healthcare decisions, blocking gun protections, banning books, censoring teachers, and championing insurrectionists didn’t go that great for them. Therefore, Republicans have settled on an old reliable “bread and butter” issue — fighting to cut taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

Bam! Take that, big-taxing progressives. Here come the trickle-down “Reagan Republicans.”

The problem is that this isn’t 1984, and most Americans do not want the wealthiest and corporations to have lower taxes. According to a March 2023 Pew survey, a jaw-dropping 83% of Americans are bothered — 61% “a lot,” 22% “somewhat” — that “some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.” A nearly identical number are bothered that “some wealthy people don’t pay their fair share.” Only 17% agree with Republicans on that issue.

Looking at these numbers, you would be hard-pressed to find a worse issue for Republicans to emphasize during the 2024 elections. DFLer activists should consider contributing to Republicans who are paying to put their “shame on the DFL for taxing the wealthy and corporations” messages in front of voters. That messaging does Republicans much more harm than good.

If only Minnesota DFLers had a way to show the swing voters who will decide close races how they are fighting to ensure that wealthy people pay their fair share of taxes to support state infrastructure and services.

Enter the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The national think tank recently found that Minnesota currently has the #1 most equitable state and local tax system, thanks to changes made by DFLers.

How does Minnesota have a more equitable system than other states? The breakdown for Minnesota by the Minnesota Budget Project shows that Minnesota’s highly progressive state income tax offsets out highly regressive sales and excise (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, gasoline) taxes. 

You may recall, that in 2020 GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen and his followers ran on eliminating that state income tax. That 2020 election didn’t go particularly well for Johson and his party.

Based on the polling and Jensen’s shellacking, shouldn’t Minnesota’s tax fairness ranking be something that DFLers tout to the 83% who agree with them? Shouldn’t they “go on offense” on this issue?

Minnesota redesigns its flag, and the Internet is NOT PLEASED

What issue gets Minnesotans most engaged and inflamed? 

The wealthiest not paying their fair share?  The unaffordability of health care and child care?  Proposals to deny citizens the freedom to control their bodies, marriages, and reading choices? Low-income families lacking affordable food, housing, and early education?

Nope.  State flag redesign! Fetch the torches and pitchforks!

If you want to see Minnesota’s “public square” aflame, take a look at social media posts about the re-design of the Minnesota state flag. Minnesotans are passionately rising up 1) in defense of the current state flag, and/or 2) expressing outrage about the lack of their preferred colors, layouts, symbols, and words being included on the six designs that have been chosen as finalists.

“Where’s the fucking loon?”

When the Minnesota Legislature decided to redesign the current state flag, it took on a thankless political challenge. But I give them a lot of credit for taking this on, because the change is badly needed.

The current flag has many faults. The state seal on a plain background design is dull, illegible at a distance, and similar to many other state flags. More disturbingly, Minnesota’s current flag spotlights a white settler plowing a field as a Native American rides away on a horse, a scene that seems to glorify Minnesota’s most shameful chapter, when indigenous people were slaughtered and robbed of their land and livelihoods by white newcomers and white supremacist politicians. 

Even if you disagree that the scene on the state seal glorifies mistreatment of indigenous people, you have to acknowledge that, given our history, it feels that way to many. Therefore, this is a needlessly divisive image to feature on a flag that that is supposed to unify all Minnesotans.

Moving into the future, we need a flag that is more unique and unifying. However, redesigning a flag in the age of social media is easier said than done. Anyone who works in or around graphic design won’t be surprised by the volume and temperature of the feedback being offered about Minnesota’s new flag design finalists. In the world of graphic design, this happens all the time. We are all supremely confident that we have impeccable design taste that everyone else should follow, and we’re not shy about sharing our thoughts. 

However, we don’t all make the same design choices. Take a look at the artistic choices we individually make in our lives. You’ll see that there is nothing close to an aesthetic consensus amongst Minnesotans. Therefore, picking a consensus flag out of the pile of over 2,000 submissions is going to be impossible. Even the finest of designs is going to be controversial with many Minnesotans.

In addition to the “everyone thinks they’re a designer” phenomenon, we now have social media, where the masses are empowered to impulsively and repeatedly voice their opinions in the most harsh terms. In the social media age, a public relations shitshow was sure to follow the naming of these flag finalists, and it has.

So really, are these six finalists really that horrible? Or would any flag design have faced similar public brickbats?

Imagine if the Internet had existed in 1776, and that George Washington had sought popular input on Betsy Ross’s flag design. Just like with the Minnesota flag designs, Betsy would have gotten an earful about her stars and stripes proposal.

“LMAO. I’m sorry, but this is reallly the best she could do?

Even I could draw that! This is so simplistic it looks like a talentless child did it!

How much did the corrupt Continental Congress pay for this monstrosity? Those founding fathers fuck up everything.

WTF do stars have to do with America anyway. And why such ugly stars?

Where’s the EAGLE? There must be at least one EAGLE!!!

WE NEED TO START OVER FROM SCRATCH!!! Here’s MY much better drawing…”

Woud it kill them to include the actual name of the country on the country’s flag?

I don’t see cotton farmers or anything else representing the south’s proud heritage here. So typical! Such disrespect! “

Why is the design so vague and symbolic? This doesn’t look anything like the 13 colonies!

Why not just use that awesome Gadsen snake flag instead?!?

Before the flag fetishists go off on me, let me be clear that my point isn’t that Betsy had a bad design. My point is that any time you ask the public to weigh in on graphic design, some will inevitably pick apart any design that is offered, even one that over time ultimately becomes beloved.

Therefore, state leaders just need to approve a design and get prepared to be pummelled for a while by the self-righteous masses of wannabe graphic designers. It’s inevitable.

Legislators won’t be praised now, but history will look more kindly on them.



Dean Phillips isn’t Close to Being MN’s Strongest Presidential Candidate

U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (DFL-Edina) seems to be relishing the national attention that comes with his months of hemming and hawing about a long-shot potential challenge of Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. To be clear, Phillips is far from the best Democrat in the nation to serve as an alternative to Joe Biden. In fact, Phillips is not even close to being the best presidential candidate in little old Minnesota.

Phillips is fine. The former CEO of Phillips Distributing, his step-father’s inherited business, is thoughtful and decent, if also sometimes dull and self-righteous, as centrist politicicans tend to be. His bipartisan instincts have made him a good fit to represent the purple-ish 3rd congressional district, which is anchored by Minnesota’s most affluent western suburbs.

However, it’s time for Phillips to come out of the TV studios and return to representing his district. As Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH) said in today’s Star Tribune:


There’s no path. There’s no outcry. Personally, I think it’s a vanity project by Mr. Phillips, and I think it could do serious damage by emboldening the Trump Republicans.”

To be clear, the most talented politician in Minnesota isn’t Phillips. It’s DFL Senator Amy Klobuchar, and it’s not even close.  Reports about Klobuchar’s erratic behind-the-scenes behavior are concerning when it comes to the world’s most pressure-packed job. Still, no Minnesota politician is better than Klobuchar at doing what presidential candidates must do well – sell progressive ideas and positions in both wholesale and retail settings to a wide variety of audiences. Whether on big or small stages, Klobuchar consistently comes across as warm, sincere, tough, bright, thoughtful, prepared, nimble, and persuasive. As such, Minnesota’s senior senator would be a much more compelling presidential candidate than Phillips.

While Klobuchar is Minnesota’s most skilled politician, DFL Governor Tim Walz ranks second. At the same time, Walz has more marketable policy accomplishments than Kloubachar or any other Minnesota pol. 

In a purple state with a slim one-vote DFL advantage in the state Senate, Walz can boast on national stages that he signed many state laws that national Democrats want to see on a national level, such as legislation creating a family and medical leave system, securing abortion rights, legalizing marijuana, expanding child care access, creating new gun violence protections, making voting more accessible, providing free school lunches for all, investing much more in public education, building a public option for health insurance, and requiring disclosure for dark money donors. 

All the while, the Minnesota economy has outpaced a relatively strong national economy, with a lower rate of inflation and unemployment than the nation as a whole.

Walz’s long list of significant policy accomplishments would be popular among the national Democrats he would need to win over in a primary challenge against Biden. Importantly, it also would be popular among the swing voters a Democratic nominee will need to win over in a 2024 presidential general election.  Politically speaking, Walz is well poised to make a “we will do for America what we did for Minnesota” pitch to Democrats clutching their pearls about Biden’s electoral viability.

State Capitol insiders are quick to point out that Walz’s myriad policy wins had more to do with House Speaker Melissa Hortman, Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, and a number of very capable DFLers chairing key committees. But that kind of inside baseball would largely be ignored by national pundits and reporters if Walz ran for President. Walz vocally supported those progressive changes and signed them into law. Therefore, it would be fair for him to tout them in early Democratic primary states.

But Klobuchar and Walz aren’t going to be in those states, not as candidates anyway. They have enough political sense to understand that they’re never going to defeat an accomplished, albeit ancient, incumbent, and that trying to do so at this late hour would irreparably ruin their reputation with the leaders and activists they need in order to be effective.

Phillips, for all his strengths, appears incapable of understanding that part.

The Facebook Maze

Post life’s ups?
BRAGGART!”
Post life’s downs?
MAUDLIN!”

Post long?
“GASBAG!”
Post short?
SIMPLISTIC!”

Post serious?
BORING!”
Post playful?
LIGHTWEIGHT!”

Post weighty?
POLITICAL!’
Post trivial?
SHALLOW!”

Post right?
NAZI!”
Post left?
COMMIE!”

Post opinion?
KNOW-IT-ALL!”
Post doubt?
WAFFLER!”

Post frequent?
BLOWHARD!”
Post infrequent?
CREEPER!”

Post positive?“
POLLYANNA!”
Post critical?
TROLL!”

Post experts?
ELITIST!”
Post speculative?
CONSPIRACIST!”


Lost in the maze.
Where’s the right phrase?

What to do?
What to do?!
What to do?!!

Post you.
Thick-skinned you!

And comment with grace, in lowercase.
Or scroll on, Friend, scroll on…

An Ad to Save American Democracy

If I were a billionaire who loved American democracy, I would pay for a TV ad something like the following to run steadily in the coming year in places where the data tell me swing voters are viewing.

“America was founded on this principle: No one should be above the law.

That’s why all of these powerful Democratic politicians were convicted.

So when you hear Republican politicians whining, remember this long list of convicted Democrats.

Is former President Trump guilty? We’ll see. We’ll see what a jury of ordinary Americans decides based on the facts and the law.

That’s how we do it in America. Because no one in either party, no matter how powerful they are, should ever be above the laws that apply to the rest of us.”

The image on the screen throughout this voiceover would be the following names, among others, scrolling steadily:

Dan Rostenkowski (Democrat-IL) – Convicted.

Harrison A. Williams (Democrat-NJ) – Convicted.

Mario Biaggi (Democrat-NY). Convicted.

Edwin Edwards (Democrat-LA). Convicted.

Don Siegelman (Democrat-AL). Convicted.

Nicholas Mavroules (Democrat-MA). Convicted.

Albert Bustamante (Democrat-TX). Convicted.

Joe Kolter (Democrat-PA). Convicted.

Austin Murphy (Democrat-PA). Convicted.

Mel Reynolds (Democrat-IL). Convicted.

Jim Traficant (Democrat-OH). Convicted.

Frank Ballance (Democrat-NC). Convicted.

Bob Ney (Democrat-OH). Convicted.

William J. Jefferson (Democrat-LA). Convicted.

Laura Richardson (Democrat-CA). Convicted.

Jesse Jackson Jr. (Democrat-IL). Convicted.

Chaka Fattah (D-PA). Convicted.

Corrine Brown (D-FL). Convicted.

Rod Blagojevich (D-IL). Convicted.

Anthony Weiner (D-NY). Convicted.

Why that ad? It’s not the least bit clever, cutting, or captivating. It’s in no danger of winning any awards.

But we need ads something like this because they inject information that is missing from the current debate. We need them to set the context for the upcoming Trump trials, a context that too many voters with short memories lack.

Former Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL), who was impeached by his own party, forced out of office, convicted, and jailed for eight years on federal charges of public corruption

We need that messaging to bust the “only Republicans get prosecuted by the DOJ” myth being promoted non-stop by Fox News and other conservative propaganda outlets.

We need that message informing discussions on this topic at family, friend, and work gatherings.

We need messaging like that to prevent Trump, if he is convicted, from achieving martyr status amongst the swing voters who will decide if Trump ultimately regains the presidency in 2024, which would empower him to pardon himself and his co-conspirators and inflict punishment on prosecutors, political opponents, critics, and America’s most important democratic institutions.

Finally, we need paid advertising like that because we can’t rely on news reporters to repeatedly provide this important context, out of fear that it will somehow appear biased.

For billionaires, paying for this kind of messaging campaign would not diminish their lavish lifestyle. And it might just save American democracy.

So, what say you, Buffet? Soros? Bloomberg? Steyer? Sussman? Simons? Anyone?

The Dumbest Part of Minnesota’s New Marijuana Law

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.

Is Minnesota Really A “Big Spending” State?

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. 

Surveys: DFLers Haven’t Overreached On Their Electoral Mandate

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.



DeSantis “Anti-Woke” Agenda Falling Flat With Voters

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?

Here DeSantis faces stiff headwinds, according to a recent University of North Florida survey. Remember, these toxic findings are from DeSantis’s home state, where he just won reelection by 19 points.

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’s other problem is that even if he somehow finds a way to defeat Trump in the primary, and I don’t think he can, Trump’s brutal and relentless attacks will drive DeSantis’s unfavorability ratings sky-high, including on issues important to general election swing voters, such as DeSantis’s past efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.  Also, the possibility of a Trump third-party candidacy looms large.

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.

Taxpayer-Subsidized Vikings Stadium Continues to Deliver Huge Returns for Billionaire Wilfs

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 other than 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.

So, yeah, I haven’t really gotten over it yet.

South Dakota’s Recession Shows Minnesota GOP Is Wrong on Economic Policy

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.

In other words, Minnesota and South Dakota are increasingly heading in opposite directions.

Best Economic Approach?

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. 

“Record-breaking Economy?”

South Dakota Standard’s reporter John Tsitrian recently did something that no other South Dakota news source seems willing to do these days. He fact-checked Noem’s “record-breaking economy” claims:

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.

Infrastructure Investment or Dog Sleds?

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.

A More Consequential Assignment for the Lincoln Project

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.

Source: National Public Radio

Third-Pary Liz Could Prove Decisive

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. 

Photo credit: Politico magazine

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.

BLM Has Achieved Much More Than Its Critics

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.

Source: Mapping Police Violence

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.