The Savage Republican

The Threshhold

It's been a while since I've posted. Mom's surgery , keeping up two households, a business and politics have kept me fairly busy.
I've had the opportunity to talk to Sue Jeffers a few times over the past two weeks. I asked her a number of questions and heard her out on a number of issues that are near and dear to her.
Over the past twenty years, I've been asked a number of times either to run for public office or why I don't run for public office. My stand? Right here.
And so, in my conversations with Ms. Jeffers, I found there is an overriding question that I kept thinking about. Why would anyone want to run for public office? What would prompt Sue Jeffers to run for the highest constitutional office in the state? Here is the owner of a very successful small, second generation family business. She is well known and respected in the local business community. She is also a mother. She's never held or even run for public office before. So, what happened that she felt that the only solution was to run for governor of Minnesota?
here is a parallel with a friend of mine. Though a conservative, he has never put a bumper sticker on his car. Never gone to a caucus. Never made a campaign contribution. And now,after Tim Pawlenty has taken away the referendum for him as regards education funding (His comment "The governor just allowed the local government schools free access to my checkbook and I can't say yes or no!". Then there was the horrible bonding bill . And to add insult to further injury, the "Make Carl Pohlad Richer" Stadium Funding bill. And it was from my friend that I first learned of Sue Jeffers. He has emailed her. Contributed to her campaign. Has a number of bumper stickers that he's distributing. He's talking to a number of his friends and co-workers about her. And he's finding that there are a large number of people that agree with him. And he told me it was wonderful to finally have someone to vote FOR, not a lesser of two evils vote.
And so, what prompts these two people to get involved to this extent? One to risk putting her private life in very public fishbowl, to suffer the taunts and attacks from people that don't even know her, to go up against the endorsed candidate and therefore the moneyed people from the MNGOP?
Well, I can imagine that the phrase "enough is enough" could easily be applied to both Sue Jeffers and to my friend.
And it would appear that the same phrase would apply to a number of people across the state.

Coleen is at it again!

This time it is in a fundraising email to supporters. In it she tries to paint Congressman John Kline as tainted because he took "$31,000 from DeLay in campaign contributions". Well let's take a look at that claim, shall we?

If you do a Google search (or Yahoo Search for that matter) on the words Tom DeLay PAC, you find that Mr. DeLay was involved in two PAC's - Texans for a Republican Majority and Americans for a Republican Majority. Both PAC's were run by a man named Jim Ellis who, along with 2 others, was indicted for money laundering at TRMPAC. They took illegal corporate contributions (at TRMPAC) and gave the funds to state wide candidates. That the men indicted were close friends to Congressman DeLay and helped his campaigns can not be denied. ARMPAC was also audited by the FEC (no doubt because of the TRMPAC irregularities and rightly so) and the FEC found that ARMPAC under-reported debts and had their state arm pay debts that were incurred by the federal arm of the PAC. It should be noted that Congressman DeLay's indictment focused on actions taken in state elections and not federal elections. There is no indictment or investigations (other than the FEC audit) for the actions of ARMPAC.

A search of the database at Open Secrets shows no individual contributions from Tom (or Thomas) DeLay to Congressman Kline. If you look at the database for Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions, you see that the Americans for a Republican Majority PAC had contributed $30,000 to Congressman Kline's 3 campaigns for Congress ($10,000 each in 2000, 2002 and 2004). There's a shocker - a PAC dedicated to getting Republican candidates elected contributed money to a Republican candidate - somebody call th FBI! Seriously - here you have a candidate that campaigns on her "ethical decision making" sending out campaign literature that lies about her opponent PAC income and yet she accuses her opponent of being unethical?! $1,000 may not seem like a large amount, but it is yet another false claim made by the Rowley campaign designed to make her opponent look bad. Whether it is lying about the Congressman's votes on relief of gas prices or his stands on sending troops to the border, Ms. Rowley's campaign has not been truthful with the residents of the 2nd District about her opponents record. What is ethical about distorting your opponent's record? If this is Ms. Rowley's idea of "ethical decision making" I think I'll pass.

Another claim in Ms. Rowley's fundraising piece is that Congressman Kline "voted to change the House rules that allowed DeLay to keep his leadership role" (ed - is it so wrong to ask that you refer to someone as "Mr." or by their title? end manners lession) if indicted. Even if that is the case (on a side note I notice how this was not an issue when Representative Jefferson D-LA was videotaped taking bribes...) when the indictment came down, Congressman Kline went on the record as stating that Congressman DeLay must step down for the sake of "the party".

Lastly the fundraising piece says "And as you know, only 34% of the district said they'd re-elect John Kline." This is based on internal polling that was done back in MARCH when no one was really paying that much attention to either candidates or issues. Precinct caucuses had just finished and that was PRIOR to Ms. Rowley's much publicized mis-steps of photoshopping a picture of the Congressman onto a stock photo of Werner Klempler during his days playing Col. Klink on Hogan's Heros and the FBI report that came out stating that Ms. Rowley is also guilty of mishandling the Moussaoui case. More seasoned political voices (like Larry Sabato) contend that the 2nd Congressional District is a relative lock for the incumbent.

I can not, in good faith, address this fundraiser without pointing your attention to the unintentional laugh line of the piece "Kline votes 98% of the time with the Republican establishment". A conservative that votes conservative????? Why that is as unheard of as a liberal voting 98% of the time with other liberals! Who would have thought????

If Ms. Rowley hopes for any chance of taking Congressman Kline's seat, she needs to stop distorting her opponents record and start telling the voters what she will do on such key issues as immigration and the Global War on Terror and how she will pay for her education and health care proposals.

Ethanol's false promise

Ethanol is supposed to be the great American replacement to fossil fuels. Congressmen and Senators from the "heartland" (including my own here in Minnesota sadly) all flock to the "promise" of biofuels. However, the "promise" may be a false promise, at least according to this Washington Post article.

"Biofuels such as ethanol made from corn, sugar cane, switchgrass and other crops are being touted as a "green" solution for a large part of America's transportation problem. Auto manufacturers, Midwest corn farmers and politicians are excited about ethanol. Initially, we, too, were excited about biofuels: no net carbon dioxide emissions, reduction of oil imports. Who wouldn't be enthusiastic?But as we've looked at biofuels more closely, we've concluded that they're not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles) of currently harvested U.S. cropland produced ethanol, it wouldn't supply all of the gasoline and diesel fuel we now burn for transport, and it would supply only about half of the needs for the year 2025. And the effects on land and agriculture would be devastating."

This is the part I love...

"Using the crop residues (called corn stover) from corn production could provide about 10 billion gallons per year of ethanol, according to a recent study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The net energy available would be greater than with ethanol from corn -- about 60,000 Btu per gallon, equivalent to a half-gallon of gasoline. Still, all of the U.S. corn wastes would produce only the equivalent of 5 billion gallons of gasoline. Another factor to be considered: Not plowing wastes back into the land hurts soil fertility."

Do you know the main reason why corn stover was first plowed back into the ground every year? Ever heard of a little phenomonon called the Dust Bowl??? HELLO ENVIRONMENTAL LOBBY!!!!!

The article even addresses the "Brazil" buzz:

"Recently, there has been lots of excitement and media coverage about how Brazil produces ethanol for its automobile fuel and talk that America should follow its lead. But Brazil consumes only 10 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually, compared with America's 170 billion. There are almost 4 million miles of paved roads in America -- Brazil has 60,000. And Brazil is the leading producer of sugar cane -- more than 300 million tons annually -- so it has lots of agricultural waste to make ethanol."

All of that is well and good, but this paragraph address the one thing that the ethanol cheerleaders (my governor included) never talks about...

"Finally, considering projected population growth in the United States and the world, the humanitarian policy would be to maintain cropland for growing food -- not fuel. Every day more than 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes -- one child every five seconds. The situation will only get worse. It would be morally wrong to divert cropland needed for human food supply to powering automobiles. It would also deplete soil fertility and the long-term capability to maintain food production. We would destroy the farmland that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will need to live."

Governor Pawlenty, Senator Coleman, Congressman Kennedy...any comment?????

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Saturday, July 08, 2006

The Threshhold

Friday, July 07, 2006

Coleen is at it again!

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Ethanol's false promise