Savage Republican

Blogging will be sporadic for the next two weeks. One of the many hats that I wear is adult club leader for the Junior Logicians 4H club and our county fair is next week. We have lots and lots of work to do as a club to get ready for the fair. I will try to get posts in as I can.

If you are in Jordan Minnesota starting on the 26th, be sure to come check out the “5 Best Days of Summer” otherwise known as the Scott County Fair.

Amendment X breaks another announcement –
Received a call this morning from Amendment X about Sue Jeffers.
Since he is out on a boat and away from computers, he asked me to post this – He will add more details late.

Sue Jeffers Republican candidate for governor will announce that her running mate for Lieutenant Governor is Ruth Hendryck.

There is also some talk of national press next week, more details later.

Amendment X will have many more details later.
Ruth is married to Scott and lives in Hanska, MN.

Also a hat tip to Captain Ed who will be adding details also.

(Amendment X called a bunch of contacts to see if anyone could post this for him – and for all the technology connected people, not one was near a computer. So much for the stereotype of a bunch of bloggers trapped in their basement blogging – everyone is out in sun today).

This is breaking news:
Sue Jeffers this afternoon selected her running mate…and it appears that the two of them will be first all women team in the nation to seek the top two state constitutional offices.
Her running mate is from out state Minnesota and the reason for her selection? Sue Jeffers is bringing to the gubernatorial campaign the issues that concern the citizens of Minnesota. Not the issues that the career politicians want to talk about or the issues that they want you to ignore as well as they are.

And the Lt. Governor candidates name?
My sources have asked me to hold back on her name until the press announcement.

I’ve written many posts on why Coleen Rowley is wrong for the second district and will continue to do so up until the November election. This one is about her stand on gas prices as listed on her “Issues” statement on Energy Independence.

“As long as we depend on Middle Eastern oil, we will be involved in Middle Eastern conflicts and invite the wrath of terrorists everywhere. As long as we are held hostage at the gas pump, our economic growth will be less and less guaranteed. As long as we must drill deeper into habitats to sustain our growing energy needs, we will continue to deface many of the remaining pristine areas we share.”

The above paragraph is full of contradictory statements. Coleen wants us to be independent of “Middle Eastern oil” (more on that in a minute) but she does not want us to drill our own oil. She laments that we are “held hostage at the gas pump” (true statement) but wants to keep pristine areas pristine….. Regarding dependence on Middle Eastern oil, Coleen has a problem The US gets a majority of it’s oil from North and South America! As a matter of fact, of the top 15 sources of US oil, Middle Eastern sources make up 12% of oil demand (per the chart below):

Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries)(Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country Apr-06 Mar-06 YTD 2006 Apr-05 Jan – Apr 2005
CANADA 1,710 1,716 1,726 1,676 1,551
MEXICO 1,601 1,697 1,692 1,541 1,510
SAUDI
ARABIA 1,582 1,322 1,413 1,449 1,533
VENEZUELA 1,171 1,183 1,190 1,391 1,352
NIGERIA 1,022 1,114 1,149 1,130 1,030
IRAQ 531 476 498 542 522
ANGOLA 389 510 446 365 461
ECUADOR 312 242 289 240 302
ALGERIA 256 281 235 232 182
KUWAIT 225 111 139 164 179
UNITED KINGDOM 169 145 108 256 225
COLOMBIA 149 170 154 183 128
BRAZIL 111 123 114 36 38
CHAD 82 84 79 75 74
TRINIDAD/TOBAGO 80 52 63 87 64

Note: The data in the tables above exclude oil imports into the U.S. territories.

Our involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts has nothing to do with oil. Even if we cut off all Middle Eastern oil needs today, we would still be involved in conflicts in the Middle East. Because as long as there are people in the Middle East who refuse to accept Israels right to exist, there will be conflict in the Middle East! Oil has nothing to do with the conflict – IDEOLOGY does. Until Coleen addresses the ideology, she will have no idea how to handle the situation and if she has no idea how to handle the situation, she is the wrong person for the job of US Congressman.

The other morning, Laura Ingraham was railing about the fact that states and municipalities were having to do the “federal government’s work” by taking on immigration.

“At least 30 states have passed laws or taken other steps this year to crack down on illegal immigrants, often making it harder for undocumented workers to find jobs or receive public services.”

Now the Logical Husband has always accused me of being a glass half full kind of person. I suppose he is correct because I generally do see the postitive in a situation, like this…..

I see this as a shining example of how our representative republic should work. The states are obligated to do whatever is necessary to protect their citizens from any danger. In Minnesota’s case, the danger coming from methamphetamine.

“Meet Alberto Zatarain. He was the local face of a highly organized Mexican drug cartel selling high-grade methamphetamine across Minnesota. Now he’s behind bars. But his case shows how cartel trafficking is intensifying here — and why it’s tough to stop.”

Alberto is (I know this will shock you) an illegal immigrant to Minnesota. He and his cohorts from the cartel come into and out of the country at will. They are not hear, as some will tell you, to work hard and get their American Dream. They are here to poison our neighborhoods. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this. THIS is what meth does to those who use it. THIS is what Alberto and his friends are bringing to America. THIS is what needs to be stopped and if the federal government will not do it, the the states are obligated to do so.

Well, well, well….the Happy to bend over, er, PAY for a better Minnesota signatories must be happy about this….

“An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief…”

The effect has even trickled down to the state level!

“Money is rolling into the state treasury at a faster clip than finance officials were expecting, and it’s looking more likely that lawmakers will have a surplus to work with when setting the next budget.”

The constant, from both stories, is that the the rich are paying more in taxes this year than the have in the past! Whether it’s estate taxes or capital gains taxes, the rich are getting hit hardest when it comes to paying tax revenues and isn’t that what the patricians wanted??? Here is a thought for the patricians….how about we make those tax cuts permanent?

Or maybe is that isn’t what the patricians are after. Maybe their real motive that they feel that there are others who should be the ones who should be paying the lions share of the taxes????? Maybe they really don’t want to pay their fair share after all and this is their way of disguising their desire to soak the middle class for more money….

Saw this over on KvM,
Governor Pawlenty to Keynote MACL Dinner

Chairman of the newly-minted Minnesota Academy for Conservative Leadership Corey Miltimore dropped me a note yesterday to mention that Governor Pawlenty will be keynoting the Saturday evening dinner of the upcoming inaugural campaign training conference July 21-23.

With this annoucement and seeing former RINO enabler Ron Eibensteiner on board –
I don’t know much about MACL except that these two are neither Conservative nor showing any leadership.

Remember the partial government shut down at the end of the 2005 legislative session? If not, you had best refresh your memory on it because it will be part of this year’s campaign. Many blamed Governor Pawlenty and the Republican led House for the shut down. If that were the case (that hard right Republicans would rather shut down the government than increase taxes) then what do you say about this?

“TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – Atlantic City’s casinos were ordered to close Wednesday, the latest casualty of a state government shutdown that entered its second day Sunday after the Legislature failed to adopt a budget by its July 1 deadline…

Most Democrats in the Assembly and several Senate Democrats oppose the sales tax increase, fearing voter backlash and reserving any tax increase for property tax reform. Assembly Democrats proposed a series of alternatives, some of which Corzine accepted, but both sides remained $1 billion apart as the budget deadline passed.”

Here we have a Democrat Governor, a Democrat controlled House and a Democrat controlled Senate shutting down because they can’t agree on whether to raise taxes or not! While this is a partially good sign (Democrats holding off on increasing taxes because they fear voter backlash) it is still a bad sign because no one even considered cutting unnecessary spending in order to free up the additional funds.

So when we are in the height of the campaign and some DFL’er tries to tell you how the Republicans are responsible for government shut-downs, I hope you will refer them back to what happened in New Jersey last week.

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.

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.

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.