Much ado has been made recently about the demise of the Republican Party and the growing sense in the New York/Washington bubble that Obama will be re-elected.  It’s certainly possible the ?improving? jobs’ numbers and economic data could give Obama enough momentum to slide into a second term.  Certainly his media advantage, his wars on conservatives, women, and the productive sector have ginned-up his base, at least somewhat.  But there are definite signs out there Obama is not a sure thing and could be a real long shot this November. “ Obamalaise,” Kyle Olson of the New York Post calls it, has begun to infect the electorate.  It is spreading more deeply than the MSM will let on.

There are two ways to study populations in the social sciences.  One is through objective measures of attitudes like with polls and surveys.  The other is through use of case studies.  I’m going to use both methods to show just how Obama is becoming the persona non grata of the political world.

First,  some polls.  For the most part, Obama has been buoyed recently by the messy Republican primary fight and the brouhaha of the contraception proposal.  His numbers have ticked up among women probably due to the ‘free’ contraception promise since that seems to affect women more.  But, the other is the media’s daily narrative about the GOP trying to do something mean in regards to contraception.   In any case, this has given Obama a little breathing room eight months out.

But, that isn’t really helping the overall case for the Democrats.  The Rasmussen tracking poll taken March 10, 2012 shows Romney with a six point edge over Obama and Santorum with a statistically insignificant one point lead.  But, the Republicans are still divided and the Democrats are supposedly united.  Moreover, Obama can’t even get above 50% against Gingrich, the candidate with the widest margin.  Obama has 48% and Gingrich has 40%.  Of course, these tracking polls and surveys are quite fungible this early in the race.  However, Obama has other more intractable problems with how he is perceived.

According to Gallup in a survey of adult voters, not registered or likely voters but all adults, 50% see Obama’s presidency as a failure.  What is really telling is 53% of independents think Obama’s failed.  That’s a margin that is almost impossible to overcome, especially as gas prices begin to rise and its effect on the economy begins to slow this flabby recovery.  To conclude a president has failed is quite a powerful sentiment.  Forty-four percent believes he’s succeeding, not exactly room for error.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/153152/Obama-Approval-Averages-February.aspx

So, some of the objective evidence is decent, some not so good for the Democrats, but they have hope.  Right?

Let’s consider some of my informal case study evidence.  My first exhibit is the Minnesota GOP District Convention where I was recording secretary.  I’ve already discussed our caucuses were far more diverse than I anticipated.   What struck me about these delegates and alternates at the convention was how young they were.  Half the assemblage was in their twenties or thirties.  Two thirds of the delegates were younger than 50.  We are constantly being told the GOP is old, white, male and doomed to extinction.  Not if these people have their way.  There was fire in the belly at this meeting.  So much so that when a resolution to defeat Obama and the Democrats in November was voted on the meeting was thunderous in its approval.  There was no dissent to record.

Now, it was a Republican gathering but it wasn’t tired, complacent, or wary, at least not about the dangers this president and his extreme wing of the Democratic Party pose.  This was an excited group with many Ron Paul supporters.   They weren’t delegates to a state district convention on a 65 degree day in March in Minnesota to vote for Obama if Paul doesn’t get the nod. These Paul supporters are committed to building a grassroots party that will extol libertarian virtues and limited government in people’s lives.  I was impressed and quite pleased.  With people like this moving through the ranks, the GOP needn’t worry about becoming a corpse.

My next example is from our vacation.  Upon returning to San Juan, Puerto Rico, we signed up with a tour to use our last day seeing this U.S. territory.  One of the first stops the driver took us to was the statues of the U.S.  presidents outside their legislative building.  He stopped the bus at Obama’s statue and asked if people wanted to get pictures.  Not a person moved.  Not a sound was made.

I later found out several people on this tour were public school teachers on spring break from New York.  Public union employees from the People’s Republic of New York, and not a one of them wanted a happy snap of the Dear Leader.  If this doesn’t illustrate the bloom being off the rose, I don’t know what does.

Hell, it isn’t just the bloom that’s fading; the damned leaves are falling off as well.

Now this certainly isn’t conclusive evidence of an Obama defeat.  It is evidence of an energized opposition, a growing conservative youth movement, and the specter of an Obama non grata among his rank and file this fall.  With half the country concluding he’s a failure and trouble garnering support even when facing a still divided GOP, Obama’s path isn’t nearly as primrose as we are being told.  In fact, it could be far thornier for a Democratic Party that has bet the house on this president and his radical allies.  They may be rather sullen come November.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

We are lectured ad nauseum about how conservatives are anti-science, moralizing crusaders who are unable to use pragmatism to solve social problems.  Then, when a socio-economic problem is addressed applying solid, accepted scientific principles, progressives lose their heads.  Jon Tevlin, an accomplice of the progressive/socialist wing of the Minnesota Democratic Party, is a shining example of this soft-headed, anti-scientific approach.  He posits human beings are not animals.  He completely rejects sound, scientific principles that when applied argue the dangers of government intrusion in socio-economic affairs.  Then, he transfers his prejudices about people into the motives and intentions of another person.  It is astounding to watch his backward attempt to smear yet another woman who has conservative ideas.

Let’s explore.

In March 10, 2012 Star Tribune, Jon Tevlin’s article, ‘Tevlin: In Rep. Franson’s district, ‘animals’ are also known as constituents,’ the writer opens with this, “When Rep. Mary Franson compared people who get food stamps to animals in the wild, beholden to humans who feed them, she was being blissfully ignorant of a growing number of people who live in a certain region in Minnesota.  Namely, her neighbors.”  The last time I checked, our biological scientific community accepted the premise that humans are in fact animals.  That is why they use mice, rats, and monkeys for clinical trials of drugs.  If humans were actually vegetable or mineral beings, this would be of no use.  We’d be testing drugs on begonias or slabs of granite.  So, Tevlin’s first premise that human beings are not animals, but something else entirely, is just plain anti-science.

Let’s pretend he distinguishes ‘wild’ from ‘domesticated’ animals.  Human beings are born without knowing the social constructs around them.  We use scientific principles espoused by such luminaries as B.F. Skinner and Ted Thorndike to in effect ‘train’ children in language, behavior, and social interaction.  They used animal models to experiment and explain their ideas.  However, it was the things people did with children and other human beings that first informed their efforts.

When we promise a child a treat to get through the grocery store without throwing a tantrum, we are using a ‘taming’ principle to teach children to delay gratification and behave in public.  Our very use of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are little treats that cause the brain to stimulate neurotransmitters of satisfaction during our social interactions.  People in relationships gratify one another to bond using positive and sometimes negative reinforcement on one another.  These are simple, widely accepted and universally applied conventions that humans use to ‘tame’ each other.  So when Franson compares human to animal behavior, wild or otherwise, it wasn’t quite the stretch Tevlin suggests.

So, Tevlin’s little rant about Franson’s comparison is absurd, unless Theologian or Shaman Tevlin has another theory about human existence and behavior.  That wouldn’t be helpful anyway.

Instead, let’s look at the comparison Franson used that has progressive/socialists so up in arms.

“I’ll read you this little funny clip that we got from a friend. It says, ‘Isn’t it ironic that the food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps, ever.

Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to please not feed the animals, because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.”

Given our little exercise in scientific inquiry into the origins and behaviorism of human beings, the quote isn’t as stinging as Tevlin would have you believe.  However, Tevlin and his ilk aren’t done with their anti-scientific smearing of a woman who happens to be conservative.  No.  Not by a long shot.

Tevlin continues, “The assumption behind Franson’s logic is that people who get assistance do so because, like animals used to being fed, they get lazy.”  Lazy? Really?  Perhaps Tevlin is new to the American English language but using a thesaurus I had to go through quite a few words to get from ‘dependence’ to ‘lazy.’  ‘Lazy’ is sloth, goldbricking, or lack of initiative to do work.  ‘Dependence’ is the reliance on other people or things.  They aren’t synonyms.  So how did Tevlin manage to equate ‘dependence’ with ‘lazy?’

Well, we can assume that he relies on his own world view of human beings.  As a collectivist, he presumes there are herds of people who are simply incapable of taking care of themselves and so government must warehouse them.  These people are too stupid and, his word, ‘lazy,’ to better their own lives and the society around them.  Therefore, since he has such sad, warped view of humanity, so must Franson.

Franson’s illustration via that little comparison is quite different.  Animals, including humans, shouldn’t be warehoused and caged using behavioral principles.  Human beings shouldn’t be dependent on government programs because it causes them to change their behaviors in ways detrimental to themselves and society.  She was profoundly correct by pointing out the absurdity of the Department of Agriculture’s policies that fail to apply sound scientific principles to different programs.

I’ll use an example that can be found in the real world of cages that progressive/socialist experiments have created.

Let’s take a single woman with three children.  She is a nurse who works in a doctor’s office.  She was hired for a set number of hours, I’ll say 30 hours per week, at a certain rate of pay.  Because of her situation, she gets state-aided health care coverage, childcare assistance, and a childcare tax credit of a couple thousand dollars a year.  She struggles, but this job allows her time to care for her children.

The growing practice causes the office administrator to offer this woman more hours and a hike in pay.  Being a responsible person, she goes home and does a basic cost-benefit analysis of her financial situation.  Even though the increase in hours and rate of pay would lead her to produce more and advance in her job, she finds state and federal assistance would end.  In addition to this, she would have less time to spend with her children.  She decides to forgo the promotion.

She is in the progressive/socialist cage of government dependence.

If she took the promotion, her production and standard of living could increase over time.  Her skills set would become more advanced.  Her job satisfaction would grow.  Her contribution to the rest of society would add to the sum total of our economy. But, very reasonably, she forgoes this potential gain because the government has dictated she gets “benefits” as a government dependent.

If she takes the job with more hours and better pay and advances her financial position, the government will now tax her for that personal growth.  Instead of a hand up for improving her situation, progressive/socialist experiments punish her.

This is the reverse of any scientific principle known to man.  According to wingnuts like Tevlin, human beings are supposed to embrace ravaging government taxes and run screaming from financial incentives like subsidies to not work.  Progressive/socialists are actually using ANTI-scientific principles in their social engineering schemes.

And they wonder why it isn’t working.

The nutty Nancy Pelosi stands before the camera and pronounces that unemployment insurance is the best thing for the economy.  Paying people to not work will increase productivity through ersatz demand.  President Obama demands higher taxes on oil companies because in his pseudo-scientific world, that will lower the costs of gasoline.  The daffy Sen. Amy Klobuchar wants higher taxes on people producing more so she can bail out losers on the economic playing field.

So, it is no wonder anti-scientific partisan hacks like Tevlin assail conservatives about insights into human nature.  People like Jeff Blodgett and Jon Grebner of Alliance for a Better Minnesota weren’t drawn to Franson’s comments like hyenas toward blood.  They are a pack of feral dogs that set upon her because she pointed out an important socio-economic principle which is anathema to their false economic narrative.  Their principle is founded on the idea they know what’s best for you and so they should manipulate us at will.  Economics is a social science however, and one principle, based on scientific discovery holds.

We get more of what we reward and less of what we punish.

They cannot let people start thinking in those basic, scientifically sound terms.  It will strip them of their power over us and return to a market that grows and improves the human condition.  They cannot abide that abdication of their power.  Collectivists, like Tevlin, must then attack people who point out the truth.  Even if they must abandon basic science and common sense, they must silence people like Franson.

But that won’t change the scientifically discovered principles of human behavior.  Not one bit.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com as “Tevlin’s Anti-Scientific Approach to Economics”

This whole kerfuffle over Obama’s dictates about abortion, contraception, and reproductive rights has the left arguing their usual nonsense about keeping church and state separate.  Rooted in their argument is a basic ignorance of the Constitution and its purpose.  Professor Obama is first among these ignoramuses.  The reason the First Amendment of the Constitution is worded in such a way is to prevent “the Church” from becoming a political actor and keeps federal involvement out of religion.  It is precisely for these reasons we passed the First Amendment.    There was no “the Church shall make no law” clause because it had no political power, and no mechanism to get power.   In fact, the entire argument is moot simply because of the way the First Amendment keeps religion and government at arm’s length from one another.

First of all, “the Church” doesn’t even exist, at least not in the way the left argues it.

The wording of the First Amendment is as follows:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

Let’s remember something important from that time.  When the framers and the amenders were constructing the federal government, contemporaneously, England and France had state religions.  In France, the First Estate of the Estates-General, their parliament, was comprised entirely of church leaders.  They weren’t elected.  They weren’t advisory.  They were a fundamental part of the government of France.  The French state had a church that had actual political power.  In England, the Church of England had high church officials in the House of Lords.  They could pass legislation.  They were a part of the government.  They weren’t elected either.  Yet they exercised power over the laws of England.

Meanwhile, in America, while there were established state churches, they didn’t have independent political authority.  There were no bishops or abbots or sect deacons who were in government as direct representatives of the church.  While these state churches did get money from the government, they didn’t have any political power, as “the church.”  Ministers and preachers were elected to state legislatures, but as popularly elected representatives of the community and not of the church.  In France and England parliamentary representatives were answerable to the church itself.  In America, they were answerable to ordinary voters regardless of religion.

So when a progressive/socialist makes an argument about keeping “the Church” out of the government, they are making a ludicrous argument.  We don’t have an official church nor do we have political representatives that answer to a “church.”  Our representatives answer to the citizens.  If you don’t like the actions of a representative, you can throw them out irrespective of their or your religious beliefs.

Now churches can certainly influence voters and public representatives.  But influence isn’t control.  Our society has elected to give government a monopoly on corporal power over us.  Churches may control their members through argument, expelling, or benefits.  But churches in the United States don’t have actual control over their members or anyone else for that matter.

In England, ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction over certain civil matters like tithes owed, family disposition, and probate until the middle of the 19^th century.  While they didn’t have powers like in the late Middle Ages, church courts had the right to fine, imprison, and impugn the character of a litigant.  For certain offenses, a kind of character record would have been created and used by the state courts to determine a person’s reliability or honesty.  The Church, in England and on the Continent, had actual temporal power over human beings.

In the colonies and then the states, the closest things to church courts were the Salem witch trials in the 1600’s.  Even then, the trials were conducted by state sanctioned authorities and not church authorities.  Americans simply didn’t have official churches controlling their behavior.  Churches influenced law and belief systems but it was a far cry from the Inquisitions or the English ‘bawdy’ courts for fornicators and other sexual offenses.  Best an American church could do was to throw you out of the congregation.  Not exactly the same as imprisonment or financial punishments.

When the slack-jawed Left howls derision at “the Church,” they are swinging at shadows.  When they argue Rick Santorum wants to create a theocracy, it’s ridiculous.  For a theocracy to exist, it would have to have political power independent of democratic votes, like in Iran.  Iran is a theocracy because an appointed board of mullahs decides who can run for office and what power those positions will have.  If the elected officials don’t comport with their dictates, these unelected clerics have the power to depose civil authorities.  The Islamic ‘mosque’ is in fact in control.

There is no such board of unelected clerics who can do such a thing and no way for it to be formed.  Even if such a thing could be imagined, it wouldn’t work.  We are a religiously plural society.  If the Roman Catholics ran the board, the larger Protestant sects would get that board nullified.  If the Baptists ran such a thing, the Methodists would get it rescinded.  Should any one group gain such power, the republic would spit them out.  This is all possible because the Amenders demanded those few simple words added to the Constitution.

Since Congress cannot establish an official religion, it cannot give independent power to any religious body.  Since Congress doesn’t have authority to stop the practice of any religious group, these groups remain free to gather adherents giving no one church dominance in the country.  These few words written and enacted over two hundred years ago have been very successful at keeping religion and government free from one another.  As long as we hold these tenets dear and free from government meddling, we will continue to have freedom of religion.  It is only when the Left’s tentacles reach out and futz with our freedom that we need to worry.

It is government that is the entangler and not the church.  Only big, intrusive government can ruin this arrangement.  Let’s make sure we don’t let them try.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

The virulent Left and Democratic Party have their talking points all in a row.  They have decided to take a bunch of quotes from Rick Santorum and create a false narrative about Republicans and contraception.  We’ve been figuring out their game these past few days starting from the ABC News debate moderated by George Snuffalupagus.  The Democratic operative, pretending to be a journalist, had an opening salvo to Gov. Romney about states banning contraception.  Romney neatly sidestepped the question, but now the Left has turned the police powers of states into a movement to ban condoms.  They are also equating not paying for contraception with banning it.  In fact, their movement assaults the very liberty of conscience our forebears handed down to us.

From Newsbusters, the transcript of an exchange by Rachel Maddow and Alex Castenallos with David Gregory on ‘Meet the Press’ this past Sunday.

“MADDOW: …he would like to end all family planning support at the federal level. He would like to eliminate federal–Title 10. Rick Santorum says that he would like states to be able to make contraception illegal. You can try to make this an issue of, oh, Democrats hate religion, but the fact is churches were exempt from this from the beginning, this is about providing health insurance. And the Republican Party is…

DAVID GREGORY, HOST: Let me…

MADDOW: …waging war on contraception at this point in a way that the–where the–and that’s where the discussion is going.”

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/02/05/rachel-maddow-falsely-claims-santorum-wants-states-be-able-ban-contra#ixzz1meQ8kiMe

Maddow and the extreme Left have decided to make this a partisan issue where none exists.  By making an outlandish claim against Santorum, she’s hoping to paint all conservatives as theocrats while Obama dictates to private companies and providers what coverage they must have and at what cost.  Snuffalupagus, probably at the direction of Media Matters, opened the door and then Maddow and her minions go rushing through it, without a shred of truth.

It is getting pushed as a meme on Twitter as well as on the leftwing blogs.  Last night a character with the handle “@theresthatbear” sent two video clips of Santorum to me alleging Santorum, “in the 1^st video he said as public POLICY as president he wld be against it. In the 2^nd he said he wld support states banning it.”  Of course, neither of them suggested anything of the sort.  In fact, Santorum clarified with this thought.

“To be clear, he does think that laws banning birth control would be dumb “for a number of reasons. Birth control should be legal in the United States. The states should not ban it, and I would oppose any effort to ban it.’’  Once again from the Newsbusters’ article by Noel Sheppard.

The MSM is also taking this imaginary ball and running with it.  From Boston.com, Deborah Kotz writes, “It turns out, he’s very much against it, apparently even for married couples, and would reverse any government policies that mandate contraception coverage if he became president.”  She’s accurate in this assessment of his position from an interview at Caffeinated Thoughts.  Santorum doesn’t support requiring by government dictate contraception coverage to anyone; married, single, separated, divorced, celibate, or undecided.  Contraception coverage should be entirely free of any government edicts period.  However, she makes an enormous philosophical leap with this statement.

“While Santorum is entitled to his beliefs, I’m trying to discern how he rationalizes adopting governmental policies that pretty much go against the practices of the vast majority of Americans.”  Kotz is suggesting since most Americans use contraception, the government policy should favor it by mandating for payment.  This argument is absurd on its face.  I will use the “bacon analogy” to highlight how ridiculous it is.

I am a big fan of bacon, as are most Americans.  A vast majority of Americans eat bacon, love it, and will add it to their diet when they can.  However, I don’t believe government policy should mandate the buying of it.  In fact, bacon, as Santorum’s argument suggests, may not be that good for you.  However, he doesn’t say it should be banned in the American diet.  It shouldn’t be required either.  Many religiously observant people, like Jewish and Muslim adherents, are adamantly against bacon.  If the government required the purchase of bacon, it would offend their religious convictions.  In fact vegetarians could be offended as well.  Regardless of ‘religious’ conviction, it shouldn’t be mandated because of philosophical belief independent of religion.  Therefore, even though Americans favor it, the government should keep its grubby little hands out of the market and let people decide for themselves. As Santorum has argued, neither mandate nor ban bacon, or contraception.  Let the people decide.

As you can see, the issue of contraception is a red hot issue made toxic by Obama’s shills.  We need to remind people that it’s a deeply personal issue that shouldn’t be affected one way or the other by the government.  In fact, this issue is the quintessential case for American liberty.  It is indeed fully free citizens’ right to decide for themselves.  It is most certainly not an issue for our ever expanding federal government to address.  It only causes problems and strips us of our right to conscience, regardless of belief.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

The lying has taken on a new level.  There is a sick smear of CPAC going on within the left wing media apparatus.  A prog.soc shadow group called “Right Wing Watch” has initiated a desperate campaign against the entire conservative movement.  They are alleging a so-called leader of a “white supremicist” movement was part of a conference at the meeting.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-santorum-just-had-dinner-white-nationalist-bob-vandervoort

They are arguing the entire conservative movement is complicit in a war against “other races.”  Their mudslinging knows no bounds.  The links for these accusations are a simple circular bounce back to the allegations made by other nutjobs.  While we cannot know the intentions or motivations of any person, the indictment of Robert Vandervoorst is spurious at best.  This is circulating around Facebook.  It isn’t possible to substantiate because the ideas are not supported by any evidence. They are like the nonsensical accusations of racism against the Tea Party, a presumption of racism based on dissent from the liberal policies of the far left wing of the Democratic Party.

Several Republicans are pulling back from statements about this conference because of leftwing attacks due to this ridiculous attack.  This kind of assault will be coming to a website near you.  You won’t hear any apologies from the Democratic establishment as to any wingnuts supposedly associated with them.  You also won’t hear of any media outlets asking them questions.

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/11/cpac-immigration-and-racism-ac

http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/race-racism-and-white-nationalism/item/395-alert-white-nationalist-to-speak-from-podium-at-cpac-2012

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

Attending my first GOP caucus as a participant was an exciting experience.  I had some butterflies going in because I wouldn’t know anyone there and it was something new.  The experience was quite different from what I had expected.  I’d like to flesh out my overall impressions a little more fully.  For those who are old hands at caucuses, this may seem to be a pointless exercise.  I disagree.  I do think there is something to be learned from a novice.  Wearing my sociology hat, I hope to bring a play by play of the experience so new ideas can be gleaned from my observations.

I live in south Minneapolis and expected our caucus to be held in a small room with about twenty people.  Minneapolis is such a one-party area, of course Democratic, so I thought a smattering of people would come.  I was wrong.  The caucus was held in a small gym with several tables for the precincts to gather around.  Around each table were four chairs.  I presumed that meant the groups would be especially intimate.  They were, but my precinct had ten people and an observer.  Certainly appeared to b a much bigger turnout than they initially planned.

Our convener was a pleasant young guy who is active in the city party.  He had attended four years ago as a Ron Paul supporter and has been with the GOP ever since.  One other man had attended the GOP caucus previously.  Otherwise, the remaining eight of us were first-timers.  That was quite apparent when we got started.  None of us knew how the thing was supposed to be run, but we were all in good spirits about our foibles.

Before we got started, I watched as the people trickled into the room.  It was hardly a monochromatic, male dominated scene.  There were two conveners who were Somali, as well as a few Somali caucus-goers.  There were people of Middle Eastern descent.  There were a couple of African Americans.  There were East and Southern Asians too.  It wasn’t a group that could be considered stereotypical Republican at all, at least according to the media’s narrative.  About 40% of the group was female.

There wasn’t a single white male dressed in a business suit, certainly no one wore tails.  I didn’t see a Rich Uncle Moneybags’ top hat in the room.  There was not one person wearing Mr. Peanut monocles in the crowd.  Most of the people looked like they had just gotten off work and hurriedly dressed down for comfort.  What’s more, the crowd was also surprisingly young.  According to the Star Tribune editorial writers, Republicans are supposed to all be old white people with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

That wasn’t the demographic I was witnessing, at all.

Many of the twenty and thirty-somethings were attired in post-Punk/former rock musician/hipster Uptown outfits.  These young people were just as heated and adamant as anyone else at the gathering.  I saw several people who I believe were gay.  In fact, I’d say at least ten percent of those attending were gay like me.  (By the way, Marilyn Carlson Nelson, none of us were attacked by roving gangs of homophobic Christian thugs as you have previously suggested)  The room had an electric charge to it as the caucus was about to convene.

Our little band of ten was unique perhaps.  We had only two people who had previously caucused with the GOP.  The other eight caucus-goers were driven by some motivation to travel to this alien space, gather with people they didn’t know, and assert themselves as part of a political party.  Some of the members of our group referred to the Republican Party as though it were an entity outside of them.  They were at a Republican caucus but not yet comfortable as identifying as Republican.  I felt a little that way myself, even though I’ve been working for conservative causes for some time.  It was rather telling.

It would be natural for me to comment on our discussions at this point, but I will refrain.  This is an examination of what group dynamic existed and not a discourse on policy.  The group was quite informed on issues and our conversations were at times heated.  Unfortunately, much of what we talked about was those things we didn’t agree on.  Little was said about what we shared ideologically.  But, it was clear this group was motivated to oust those Democrats currently in power and to replace them with someone more conservative.  That was obvious.

Since this was such an unfamiliar group who hadn’t done this before, I believe our process wasn’t as clean and straight forward as it could have been.  It was very refreshing for a group of people who were new to the process to get their views heard without censor.  Knowing we could openly discuss conservative beliefs without some leftist caterwauling was a nice change.  We voted on party platform suggestions without rancor or deep dispute.  In spite of being strangers in a strange land, it was a productive and enlightening evening.

Upon reflection, there are a couple of things the caucus experience taught me.  First, the common narrative of Republicans being old, white, male, and rich is downright absurd.  Of all the things our entire group was, that caricature certainly wasn’t present.  This is important to understand because for a political party to grow, it must be something people can identify with.  Human beings tend to congregate among those with whom they feel most comfortable.  We are usually most comfortable with others like us.  The tired, false narrative of Republicans as fat cat, cigar-chomping bosses or hayseed hick troglodytes is simply a smear job by the left and the political elite.  We were a very mixed group with one driving desire; to save our country from the policies that are hurting it.

The second thing I got from the caucus is this party is deeply fractured.  Not fractured by those supporting Santorum or Paul.  It is not split by the libertarians or social conservatives.  The Republican Party is alienated within itself.  Between the lies and mischaracterizations by the media about conservatives and the social void of a cohesive party structure in the city, Republicans are divided from each other.  Democrats have become very good at creating a socio-political cohesion of their members and allies.  Republicans, at least in the city, have not.

That is not to suggest this is anyone’s fault.  Blame isn’t what we need going forward; it is ideas.

To create socio-political cohesion, Republicans must think about a couple of things.  How do we ‘fix’ the brand name?  How do we connect our supporters together into a kind of network that supports our ideas and spreads our message?  Now, I know many party regulars at this point are ready to throw me into the lake.  They have built networks of people in their area.  They have brand identification that isn’t sullied.  That is great and I applaud those who have done so.  But, we need to build up our membership and network all over, in the city, in the country, in all suburban areas.

So, I propose two things to get started.  First, we should take advantage of newcomers to things like caucuses to revitalize membership.  We never really talked about the things the group agreed with as Republicans, or neophyte party supporters.  Part of the discussion should be those political ideas that unite us.  Starting the caucus with saying the Pledge of Allegiance was a good thing.  I found it quite heartwarming.  But, then when our group convened it was a discussion about delegates, candidates, party planks, and our differences on those things.  We never got to talk about why we were there which was ostensibly to kick out Obama and as many progressive/socialists as we can.  We never really created any social cohesion and at the end, we shook hands and drifted out into the night back to our own lives.

I understand the caucuses are not designed to be party rallies and social gatherings.  But, I believe injecting a bit of that into the mix could help create some connections.  Those connections would become networks along which human interaction would grow and thrive.  Developing rapport among one another is crucial for building relationships that will support our cause and spread our message.

I think we should also consider other kinds of activities for party members.  I don’t know enough election law to determine what these could be, but the Democrats have us all out-gunned on creating socio-political support groups.  We have groups which support conservative causes but there isn’t enough interaction or coordination.  Is there a way we could do more outreach into communities?  Can we make more forays into community events, not just as a political entity but as charitable arms identified with the party?  Republicans and conservatives believe deeply in volunteerism and helping others without using the government.  Perhaps there are ways we could openly practice that ideal more in the public eye.

I have to say I was deeply moved by the experience.  I will continue working with and in the Republican Party, hopefully making it a more vital part of the state.  My impressions of the caucuses were overall very positive.  I do like to learn from any situation I find myself in.  Perhaps my little navel-gazing exercise may have some ideas we can use as a group.  I came away from this meeting with the two impressions I had of the caucuses.  I am extremely proud to be affiliated with a group that is interesting and informed.  I found the party to be an incredibly diverse group of people with great ideas, interests, and hopes for this nation.  We just need to make sure everybody knows what we’re really like, and not what the common narrative makes us out to be.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

This past weekend, there were several articles addressing the marriage amendment up for a vote this coming fall.  Instead of dealing with it rationally, the Star Tribune printed two articles that merely defame conservatives without addressing the actual issue. The Democratic Party is creating a narrative that suggests if you are for the amendment, which merely memorializes the law as it stands, you are engaging in hateful vitriol and vile acts of bigotry.  However, if you are in favor of same-sex marriage rights, it is perfectly acceptable to allow the status quo to continue; marriage as between only one man and one woman.  The idiocy of this position and the negativity it propounds should be called out and a case should be made for resolving the issue.  First, let’s explore the bungled case against the marriage amendment.

From Marilyn Carlson Nelson, January 14, 2012, ‘The marriage amendment, from all angles;’

“Do we want to shackle our grandchildren, perhaps for decades, with the vitriolic debate and sometimes violence that have preceded the great human-rights victories of our nation?”  I am baffled by this characterization of the situation.  Nelson isn’t a firebrand liberal, yet she is engaging in the most divisive and obtuse argument the Democratic Party uses against conservatives.  Perhaps Nelson has been plagued by lawless gangs of homophobes wandering the state looking for gays to bash, but I haven’t.  AND I’M GAY.  Besides, this argument about whether or not to make the definition of marriage a part of the Minnesota constitution is academic at this point.  Same-sex marriage isn’t legal in this state now and Nelson doesn’t make an argument for any kind of accommodation.  Her case is entirely negative, but she goes even further afield.

“I see myself at the dock waving goodbye to a ship filled with friends, family and colleagues — all of whom happen to be gay. People who through a lifetime of ups and downs have laughed with me, supported me and enriched me”   I have searched high and low, and I haven’t found a single marriage amendment advocate who suggests shipping people like me out of the state.  If we want to find a group of people who enjoy shipping people off to places, it would be progressives who do that.  During World War I, it was progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson who gathered German-Americans into camps.  During World War II, it was progressive Democrat FDR who gathered German-Americans and Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.  We don’t find that kind of behavior among conservatives.  It’s always ‘us versus them’ collectivists who adore marginalizing, demonizing, and isolating groups based on identity.  Nelson’s argument is pure nonsense and it only obscures the issue and brings no light to the debate.

The local Democratic spokesmodels are also willing to add no substance and lots of hyperbole to the discussion.  Lori Sturdevant addresses another strange argument the Left has been making.   She suggests all Republicans must be considered ‘anti-gay’ through guilt by association.  Since Republicans passed the marriage amendment proposal, Republicans must now be perfect people or they are somehow ‘hypocrites.’

“I raise the Smith gossip not to dwell on the personal lives of state politicians, diverting though that topic has been of late.

Rather, my attention is drawn to how quickly a nexus developed between reported affairs of the heart and other body parts, and legislators’ votes for the anti-same-sex-marriage amendment last May.” ‘Lori Sturdevant: The marriage amendment vote,’ January 14, 2012

Let’s take this apart carefully.  Her first canard is absolutely ridiculous.  Rep. Steve Smith of Mound was the victim of a leftwing rumor involving a sexual relationship.  Smith is single.  There is no evidence of a dalliance.  But, Sturdevant, perhaps jealous of the scandalmongers at Politico, brings up an unsubstantiated bit of gossip to make a point that isn’t even a point.  Smith voted against the amendment, but somehow, in the rickety attic which is her mind, Sturdevant thinks this provides her a case against the amendment.  Huh?

She then states her attention is directed to how a legislator votes and their romantic lives.  Why?  Because she’s making political hay over the Koch affair and will continue to connect individual behavior of Republicans to the same-sex marriage argument, a truly wild stretch.  This argument is another case of intellectual dishonesty that obscures the issue.

I have yet to hear an argument for the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman because that will make people faithful.  No one believes a traditional definition will cause fidelity.  The inverse is also ridiculous.  No one I know has ever said if same-sex partners can get married, this will allow opposite sex couple to cheat on one another.  The argument is that marriage is a sacred union between two people of the opposite sex.  What they do within that union is between them.  This mingling of the concept of marriage and private behavior is illogical and borders on the insane.  There is no causal ‘nexus’ between the institution and the actions of individual couples.  Yet, charges of ‘hypocrisy’ never take into account this philosophical dilemma.

To make it even worse, neither so-called advocate, Nelson nor Sturdevant, make a positive case for same-sex unions.  They name-call and smear proponents of the definition as between a man and a woman, but never actually commit to the cause they argue.

Just like President Obama and his so-called, ‘evolving’ opinion on same-sex marriage.  The Panderer-in-chief is against same-sex marriage, well maybe.  He rides the fence because he wants to cater to both sides of the issue.  Yet, no one calls into question the position of the national leader of the Democratic Party.  We don’t hear accusations of Obama being a hypocrite, which he blatantly is.

John Edwards, Democratic Party vice presidential nominee in 2004, gave us a more likely example of excusing infidelity within marriage than do supporters of the marriage amendment.  So did Democratic President Bill Clinton, known perjurer and serial adulterer.  They are certainly far more destructive to the institution of marriage, yet Nelson and Sturdevant never mention their perfidy.  In fact, the organization Moveon.org was established to excuse Clinton, signer of the Defense of Marriage Act, of his crimes.  The Democratic Party sits on the sideline and snarks, but doesn’t do a single thing about the issue. It’s almost like they don’t want to actually help gay people but want an issue to keep gays on their plantation.

As I’ve previously noted.

So, I will make a conservative case for partnership rights for same-sex couples. I will do so without calling anyone a name or casting aspersions at any group.  I will do so with sincerity and integrity.

Same-sex relationships exist and the law makes no accommodation to deal with them.  For example, my partner and I have ordered our lives as a unit.  We planned our retirement, living arrangements, and daily lives around one another.  Our relationship isn’t just a couple of roommates, but two people who have organized our behavior toward a shared end.  Lots of other gay people have done the same.  As a result, when there is a death, or a breakdown, or some other dilemma, the courts have no way of dealing with the situation.  While we are not a married couple, we are also not a casual partnership.

I’ve listened carefully to objections to same-sex marriage and several points make sense. While I don’t agree, I can respect the belief of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual relationship that is a union of two and spiritually ordained.  I can agree that our law’s treatment of marriage is to further the ends of childrearing and care for one another.  Two people are the optimal grouping for these ideals.

What I suggest is we continue to reserve marriage as a unique institution to those ends.  That doesn’t mean we cannot have other arrangements for people like me and my partner.  We can have a legal arrangement like a civil union that our courts and other civil officials can recognize as something different than just two ships which pass in the night.  This is actually a rather conservative idea because instead of using the law to shape human behavior, conservatives like the law to reflect reality.

Let’s consider business relationships as an example.   Formal “C” corporations were initially the first kind of partnership which gave an entity the independence and liability of its own being.  Shareholders were no longer on the hook for the debts or problems of this business relationship.  You could buy stock and earn dividends, but creditors couldn’t go after you personally for the actions of the entity.

This older form of corporation didn’t work well for some kinds of businesses.  Yet, these entities needed to insulate their personal lives from liability for the actions of their agents.  They also needed a kind of organization that would allow others to invest so they could grow, yet didn’t need the expense and formalities of a full blown corporation.  So, we created “S” corporations in 1982 and later LLC’s.  These were business forms that allowed groups of people to invest and operate more flexibly than with the traditional form.  They aren’t better or worse than historically defined corporations, but simply different.

I propose the same kind of arrangement to be created for same-sex couples.  This would allow courts and civil officials to deal with our relationships as we intend instead of simply acting as though we are strangers before the law.  It would allow us the ability to articulate our arrangement instead of pretending we are just roommates.  It’s as with corporate forms, it wouldn’t be better or worse, just different.  It would give same-sex couples standing in the law and yet preserve the traditional form of marriage as it has always been.

The state legislature could create such a form even should the marriage amendment pass.  The constitutional amendment only defines marriage as between one man and one woman.  It doesn’t exclude other forms of relationships having similar status.  It would be a reasonable accommodation that would alleviate an ongoing problem.  And, it wouldn’t change the traditional view of marriage.

See.  I managed to make a positive case for same-sex relationship legal status without recriminations or abuse of another.  I didn’t need to demonize or make spurious accusations toward another person.  I managed to present a position that could alleviate an issue, engage the debate, and make a positive contribution.

And I didn’t suggest shipping anyone anywhere, angry gangs of thugs, or the sex lives of political officials to do it.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

You know it’s gotten bad when the Democratic spokesmodels at the reliably liberal Star Tribune are chiding President Obama.  In a commentary entitled, ‘Recess appointment flap — a sign of the rule-bending times,’ Strib editor D.J. Tice has some cautionary words for his friends on the left.  Using a comparison that is more akin to that of the Tea Party, Tice warns that if we let President Obama circumvent the Senate’s authority to advise and consent, we may find ourselves becoming Libya.  He suggests, quite rightly, that our political procedures encased within the Constitution are what keep us free and democratic.  Tice’s poking of the Democrats, while necessary, was rather weak tea, but it shows just how radical this (his) party has become.

The situation isn’t very complex.  In the Clinton administration, they figured out just how long an absent Congress must be before making recess appointments, legally.  The magic number was three.  Clinton could safely appoint high officials without the consent of the Senate if they weren’t in session for over three days.  This number came in handy because when George W. Bush became president, Democrats kept Congress going with pro forma sessions to prevent Bush from appointing people to vacancies.

Constitutional Professor Obama, never one to cater to something as pathetic as the law, decided to appoint some officials even though Congress wasn’t in recess.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat Nevada, endorsed the procedure, even though it means the blunting of one of the Senate’s most important duties; deciding whether appointees are trustworthy and acceptable to administer the laws Congress has enacted.  Obama basically took the constitutional powers of the Senate into his own hands.  Democrats are mostly silent over this blatant exercise of unlawful authority.

For the most part, Democrats realize if they relinquish this powerful tool, when a Republican president is elected, they will be without the ability to stop his or her appointees, no matter how much they disagree or doubt the candidate.  But, Professor of Constitutional Law Obama is becoming desperate both politically and policy-wise.  He continues to get kicked in the teeth by his most radical leftwing allies for being too soft.  This act would prove Obama could be a cowboy too, albeit a lawless outlaw.

So, the editors of the Star Tribune knew they needed to publish their protests to this blatant, flagrant abuse of presidential power, no matter how muffled.  In order to retain even a modicum of credibility, they had to get this on the record.  Tice did three things in his article.  First, he pretended the paper cared about the warp and weave of the Constitution, though Democrats only really bother with the ‘general welfare’ and ‘commerce clause.’  Second, he had to warn rank and file progressives and socialists that this could easily bite them in the derriere once The Party loses power.  The final, and most important thing Tice wanted to achieve, was to twist the president and the Democratic Party’s feckless behavior into something to blame Republicans with.

So Tice mischaracterized the situation like this:

“So, let’s review: 1) Obama has called the Senate’s bluff on its fake sessions, 2) in order to make recess appointments that really aren’t justified by a prolonged Senate absence, 3) while all the while Republicans are blocking confirmation votes they couldn’t win to paralyze agencies that they can’t abolish or restrain via legislation.

It’s shenanigans all the way down.”  January 10, 2012.

Pro forma sessions aren’t fake sessions.  In fact, it was during a pro forma session just a couple of weeks ago the Senate passed the two month extension of the payroll tax rebate Obama and his fellow prevaricators in the Senate had wanted.  From the United States Senate Democrat website:

“During today’s pro forma, the Senate entered an agreement to pass a bill providing for a 2 month extension of the reduced payroll tax, unemployment insurance, TANF, and the Medicare payment fix; agree to the request for a conference with respect to HR 3630; and authorize the Chair to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate, all occurring if the House sends us a bill to extend reduced payroll tax and other provisions for a period of 2 months.”

http://democrats.senate.gov/2011/12/23/agreement-on-2-month-extension-of-payroll-tax/

If pro forma sessions are fake sessions, the payroll tax cut, passed by Reid in a pro forma session, is in fact null and void.  I wonder if Tice is bothered by that idea.

Tice then characterized Obama’s abuse of power concerning the appointments, “really aren’t justified by a prolonged Senate absence.”  What mealy mouthed drivel is this?  Tice specifically picked words that neither condemn nor admonish, but instead suggest the president was being a little too assertive.  He should have called Obama’s act criminal in that he stole the powers of the Senate to judge appointed officials and actually bypassed the representatives of the people.

Tice ends with the idiotic narrative that Republicans are obstructionists.  This in spite the fact the Democratic controlled Senate hasn’t passed a budget in almost 1000 days and there are fifteen jobs bills passed by the House and ignored by the Democrats.  Tice also pretends the House didn’t pass a YEAR LONG payroll tax rebate while the Senate only passed a two month extension because Minnesota’s Sen. Amy Klobuchar had to get home and hang the mistletoe and cut the fruitcake for her union thug bosses and enviro-fascist allies.

Tice ends with the dismissive “shenanigans all around” when it clearly one-sided.  The only shenanigans going on are in and amongst the Democratic Party and their tyrant-in-chief, Professor Obama.  The Republicans are doing their job by stopping the installation of a lackey by the name of Richard Cordray.  Republicans insisted the job he was getting had too much power and was too broad.  They contended, quite reasonably, other regulatory agencies had boards to oversee financial institutions, yet the Consumer Protection Safety Bureau was a fiefdom that would ruled by one person.  This certainly seems like a fair reason to object to an overreaching executive branch hellbent on singular control of the economy out of the White House.

Tice doesn’t mention that.  He and his cohorts at the official DFL newsletter whitewash that in order to excuse the dictates of an authoritarian president and his toady followers in the Senate.  But, at least we have to give Tice credit.  He spoke out against the president’s actions, unlike our two cowardly Senators, Klobuchar and Franken.  They wanted the president to recess appoint communist Elizabeth Warren to head this totalitarian bureau.  I’m sure they think Obama’s appointment of Cordray was the safe way out, even if it was at the expense of their own constitutional authority and responsibility.

Tice may use a rhetorical device like the Tea Party, but he twists and contorts the facts like a progressive.  We should all demand our elected officials protest this unlawful act by the president, or at least get them on the record of where they stand.  Someday, people like Sen. Franken will be whining and crying because he can’t stop President Mitt or President Ron’s appointments.  It will be because of unlawful President Obama and his unabashed theft of power.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com as “D.J. Tice’s “Weak Tea” Party Protest

Fox Lake Power Plant has been listed as an electrical generating plant to be closed down by the EPA ostensibly due to it being ‘dirty’ and not complying with new rules generated by the EPA administrator uber-radical Lisa Jackson.  In my last post I questioned why this small rural Minnesota power plant being placed on the list because it doesn’t even burn coal and hasn’t since 1998.  It seems the EPA, as administered by the Obama administration, is using a kind of “slide rule of law” in determining what plants should close and which remain open.  Instead of adhering to a historically American version that demands all people to be treated equally before the law, Lisa Jackson and President Obama view some populations as more equal than others.

How is Fox Lake being treated in comparison to other plants serving other populations?  Is there a political calculation being used instead of a scientific standard?  These questions arise because it seems rather bizarre a natural gas fired power plant would be closed for coal-burning reasons.  It has been suggested the reasons are Fox Lake still has a coal burning boiler on the premises and an ash pond, though that pond isn’t polluting.  Following these standards, let’s look at two other power plants and see how they are treated.

I looked into the power plants that generate electricity for the Twin Cities Metro power grid.  The entire metropolitan area is served by several power plants, two within the city limits of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  One, in St. Paul, is called the High Bridge Power Plant.  The other in Minneapolis is the Riverside Power Plant.  Other plants also feed the Twin Cities Zone of the grid including a plant called Sherco (Sherburne Power Plant).

Riverside Power Plant was converted to burning natural gas, in 2009.  It is five times the size of Fox Lake and serves the dark blue inner city.  If we consider the fact it once was a coal-fired plant, we’d have to conclude it spewed poisonous gases far more copious that little Fox Lake did, and for eleven years longer.  Yet, Riverside isn’t on the EPA’s shut down list.  According to an EPA filing, the Riverside Generation Plant is now 100% gas-fired but “Unit #8 is currently idle, is not producing ash, and is not expected to operate on coal again before it is converted to gas.”  This document was sent on March26, 2009 and there is no reason to believe the coal-fired boiler was removed since them.  The pond was dredged and going to be removed.  However, the ash had to go somewhere so its existence is an issue.

So why isn’t Riverside being shut down?  It burned coal until April 2009, according to Xcel Energy’s website.  It has a coal-fired boiler on site.  In fact, it lists coal-fired boiler Unit #7 as being used as a secondary steam generating unit from the exhaust from the gas-fired units.  Sure, it’s not burning coal but the mere existence of a coal-burning unit at Fox Lake was considered enough to shut it down.

If Riverside were to be shut down, the city of Minneapolis would be starved of electricity.  The plants in the surrounding areas would be hard pressed to fill the void.  Yet, Riverside and Fox Lake fit the same criteria.  They simply serve different populations, one urban and dark blue, the other rural and red.

Next, if we look a little to the north of the Twin Cities, we find a far more stark comparison to Fox Lake.  Up in Becker Minnesota is a plant called Sherco.  Sherco supplies power for the northern and western parts of the metropolitan area grid.  Becker is in a conservative part of the state, but it serves a population that is blue as well.  Sherco is the polar opposite of Fox Lake, yet it isn’t being shut down either.

Sherburne Power Plant is enormous, generating 2400 megawatts of power, five times the amount of electricity as Riverside and 24 times that of Fox Lake.  It’s a coal-fired plant with state of the art scrubbers to keep pollution at a minimum.  However, Sherco isn’t on the EPA’s list, even though it burns coal and has enormous ash ponds, one which leaked in 2007, according to EPA filings.

Sherco was even listed as one of America’s ‘dirtiest’ power plants by the Environmental Integrity Project in 2007.  It was listed in the top twenty producers of mercury and thirteenth biggest producer of that evil, toxic gas carbon dioxide.  It spews out sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides, yet curiously it isn’t on the EPA’s list.  Why would such a filthy polluter get away with all this terrible energy production while meek little Fox Lake gets padlocked?

Well, Sherburne Power Plant is the big dog that fuels business and homes for most of the Twin Cities area.  In fact, if you add up all the other electrical generating plants throughout the Twin Cities, only then do they match the power generated by Sherco.  Almost half of the electricity used by the Twin Cities area comes from the coal-burning Sherco plant.  If that plant were to convert to natural gas, it would burn as much as 80% of all of Minnesota customers use now.  It’s a big plant and important in keeping the Twin Cities’ lights on.

But, according to the EPA, it is a dirty, polluting plant.  So, why isn’t Sherco getting shut down and leaving Fox Lake alone?

In a word:  political calculations.

Shutting down such a plant would be the death of the Twin Cities economy and howls of public protest would shout down any argument to the contrary.  The plant is the heart and soul of the economic engine of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.  So, the EPA had to get out their slide rule to factor in the political considerations.

Fox Lake is little and rural. Sherco is enormous and serves a highly populated area.  Even though Fox Lake’s ‘transgressions’ pale in comparison to Sherco, one is shuttered, the other ignored.

This is not an argument for shutting down Sherco or any power plant for that matter.  It is the use of political considerations while making public policy that should trouble us.  The people of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa shouldn’t be treated differently than people of the Twin Cities, regardless of political power.  The EPA should be generating rules and regulations that can be implemented regardless of population served.  If the rules promulgated do irreparable damage to a large group, it will do so to a small group, though with less of a political impact.

This is just plain wrong.  It doesn’t fit our strict standard of a law impacting everyone equally.  It creates a sliding scale of harm compared to cost.  Regulations should treat all players the same.  One group doesn’t get a pass while another is punished for the same offense.  The Obama administration doesn’t care about such considerations.  Lisa Jackson gets out her slide rule and calculates harm and political risk, and makes a determination.  That’s the rule of man, and not of law.  We should not tolerate it.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

References are as follows:

http://www.xcelenergy.com/About_Us/Our_Company/Power_Generation/Sherburne_County_(Sherco)_Generating_Station

http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/surveys/northern-states.pdf

http://www.environmentalintegrity.org/news_reports/documents/DirtyKilowatts-Top50MercuryPowerPlantReport.pdf

http://minnelectrans.com/documents/2011_Biennial_Report/2011_Biennial_Report.pdf

The Obama administration’s EPA has declared a war on coal-fired power plants.  The president famously remarked he didn’t care if coal power plants operated, but he would make sure they were cost-prohibitive.  His EPA rolled out rules that would make coal-burning power plants a target in his war on mercury and other pollutants.  His radical EPA chief said, “This has been 20 years in the making,” Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, said today at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. “This is a great victory for public health, especially for the health of our children.” Bloomberg News, December 21, 2011.  But, when you look a little deeper, it seems the list of 32 power plants targeted by Obama doesn’t jibe with their reasoning.  It appears the EPA isn’t just targeting polluters, but targeting specific demographic and political areas.

Consider this, in southern Minnesota along Interstate 90, there is a little town by the name of Sherburn.  Outside Sherburn is a power plant that is on the list of targets issued by the EPA.  The Fox Lake power plant has been generating electricity in the area since 1950 and produces power for nearby homes and businesses.  The new rules being promulgated by the EPA define Fox Lake a ‘dirty’ producer of electricity.

From the AP:

“Combined, the rules could do away with more than 8 percent of the coal-fired generation nationwide, the AP found. The average age of the plants that could be sacrificed is 51 years.

These plants have been allowed to run for decades without modern pollution controls because it was thought that they were on the verge of being closed by the utilities that own them. But that didn’t happen.”  ‘Federal clean-air regulations mean closure for dozens of power plants,’ Dec 20, 2011,by Dina Cappiello.

So, finally Fox Lake is being slated for shutdown because it’s time has run out to change over to cleaner forms of energy, right?

Wrong.

From the Fairmont Sentinel, the newspaper from the county where Fox Lake is located:

“There are four production units at the Fox Lake plant, but only two are in operation. Those units produce about 100 megawatts, enough to power about 100,000 homes.

While the plant formerly burned coal, today it only uses natural gas.”

So, we now find out Fox Lake isn’t a ‘dirty’ coal operation at all.  It is a clean electricity producer using only natural gas . . . since 1998.  For the past fourteen years, Fox Lake has been making electricity without the use of coal, and so suddenly it’s a target of the EPA.  But why?  This seems outlandish and capricious.

Ryan Stensland, spokesman for Alliant Energy explained it like this:

“What the EPA looks at are the units, specifically the boilers associated with the units,” he said. “They are identified as being tied to units that could potentially burn coal. If they still have that
capability, they need to be upgraded to bring it into compliance … Even if it were to burn coal for only 10 minutes only one day out of the year, the EPA still wants to have that upgraded to be environmentally compliant.” ‘Fox Lake power plant to be retired — eventually,’ December 23, 2011, Jenn Brookens – Staff Writer , Fairmont Sentinel

So, the EPA created rules that just having a coal burning boiler on the premises makes you a dirty producer of energy.  Given the nearest coal mines to Minnesota are in Illinois, it would be quite the trick for Fox Lake to sneak a few loads of coal to the plant just to skirt the rules.  Since it converted to natural gas over a decade ago, why would it go to all that trouble?  The EPA seems to be creating a rule that prevents an event that simply wouldn’t happen, especially since the coal burners are off-line to begin with.

This is curious.  So, what other reason would the EPA rationally have for shutting down Fox Lake?

From the AP story, “Other rules in the works, dealing with cooling water intakes at power plants and coal ash disposal, could cause the retirement of additional generating plants.”  So, perhaps Fox Lake has water and coal ash disposal issues that caused its shutdown.  Since burning natural gas doesn’t create coal ash that seems to be eliminated as a reason.  However, in a response to the EPA in 2009, Alliant Energy, owner of the plant answered this as to water issues:

“Ash Pond: IPL [Interstate Power and Light] is not aware of any known spills or unpermitted releases from this pond within the past 10 years. For purposes of this question, all discharges exiting the pond via the discharge point governed under the NPDES/SDS permit, including any water quality exceedances, are interpreted to be ‘permitted releases’.” http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/surveys/alliant-fox.pdf

Regardless, if the ash pond was the issue and water runoff or discharges affected the environment, the EPA would demand a cleanup and containment process.  Since they have not done so, it would appear the environmental angle is not the issue.  The Fox Lake plant burns natural gas which doesn’t emit mercury or other poisonous gases.  It hasn’t had an issue with the ash pond or water.  The entire reason Fox Lake is being shut down by the EPA appears to be because an old coal boiler sits in the building.

This stinks to high heaven.  If the issue were that Fox Lake was inefficient and outdated, it is the owner and the purchasers of electricity who should close it down or modernize it.  If it were an excess of electrical power in the area, this would be a concern of the public utilities commission and the Department of Energy.  However, this is the EPA demanding Fox Lake close down in spite its compliance with every material issue considered.  I refuse to believe the existence of an old-fashioned coal-fired boiler is as the reason for shutting down an electrical generating plant.  Such a thing is simply too stupid to accept.

So, why is Fox Lake the victim of the EPA’s overreach?

After reviewing a list of the power plants to be shut down by the EPA, a specific pattern began to emerge, rural, conservative areas.  Martin County and surrounding counties are consistently more conservative and Republican.  Would this reflect the list as a whole?  http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/List-of-power-plants-retiring-in-face-of-EPA-rules-2410590.php

An overwhelming majority of the list of thirty two sites to be closed voted Republican in 2008.  At least 21 of the 32 sites are represented by Republicans or voted with Republicans in the last election cycle.  Almost every site, with the exception of Alexandria, VA and Louisville, KY, are rural areas that tend to vote for more conservative candidates.  Almost every power plant on the list supplies areas that are hostile to Obama and the radical environmentalist agenda being promoted by this administration.  Since inexpensive energy is the life blood of a dynamic, growing economy, it seems strange only these areas would be held to these capricious standards.  Meanwhile, there are plenty of other power plants that are not on the list but burn coal.

This is not to suggest Lisa Jackson sat down with David Axelrod and plotted which districts they wanted to punish because of political reasons.  On the contrary, I think we have been told Obama isn’t even going to try and get the blue collar, rural or exurban white vote.  Instead of picking victims, the demographics of these areas allowed them to be targeted without worry of political fallout.  If there were questions, the EPA would just refer to mercury and other pollutants as the reason for the closures.  Any anger at the arbitrary rules wouldn’t affect the president’s reelection effort in the least since the people served by the plants have been written off already.

But, the Fox Lake example shows the EPA rules are not driven by environmental concerns.  Lisa Jackson has written energy sector rules, not environmental rules that make sense.  It’s also no surprise the Fox Lake power plant sits within an area with several wind farms.  The electricity generated by these windmills is significantly more expensive than that generated by burning natural gas.  To equalize prices, the EPA is making fossil fuel electricity more dear and therefore more expensive thereby making wind energy more competitive.  This kind of duplicity and abuse of power is becoming more apparent in the Obama administration.  Instead of just making the case for a policy, they make up an excuse to change the nation’s power grid with contrived reasons.

We are witnessing the most ‘transparent’ administration in history revealing itself as the most devious.  The war on Fox Lake is just a good example of their disingenuous nature and a philosophy of deceit and thuggery.  The people served by these power plants should be furious.  The rest of the country should be alarmed.  After all, it could be your power plant and pocket book that are affected next.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com