A comment to the earlier critical post explained nearly the same thing Two-putt Tommy indicated, in better detail. It was neither Mr. Golding, nor the Tinklenberg staff in general that were acting unusually or inappropriately "off base" from what apparently had become an established DFL party practice.
My dissatisfaction with Elwyn Tinklenberg and the Tinklenberg candidacy wrongly was misdirected, off point, at staff.
Months ago, Golding properly tracked me down in the Anoka town hall hallway prior to the Anoka debate between Olson and Tinklenberg and politely confronted me over the error.
Golding was correct. I should have put an update to the post back then, March 2008. I had intended to and did not do so because of a primary attention to the debate itself, and other events.
Aside from billboards, the Tinklenberg campaign seems enamoured of technology. I spoke at the endorsement convention in the hallway a month or so after the Anoka debate with another young Tinklenberg staff person about all the "headset" people milling about everywhere in their green Tinklenberg tee shirts, etc. Like cult people having to maintain a virtual constant contact to keep the cult a living thing.
They seemed to all be routing information to back-room headquarters operatives on site, and I had an impression midway between thinking about NFL sidelines with coaches angrily throwing down headsets over a dropped pass or a penalty, and a view of the technology involved for my emails being routed through an ATT splitter to NSA operatives, the bright and dark marvels of technological capability, etc.
That dark side of the force thing, is how the other party operates, the GOP administration with the ATT/NSA eavesdropping thing. It, so far, is not the DFL.
It is how too much of DC is too permissive of civil rights and privacy abuses which the framers of the Constitution feared even back in days when messages were delivered on a less frequent basis by horseback. Sealing wax, trusted couriers and signet rings then, vs 256 or 512 bit encryption, if you really care now.
The GOP rank-and-file tolerance of its leadership's abuse of freedom that way [facilitated by too many of the Blue Dogs and other quasi-Democrats more into liking the air surrounding a fear-of-terror ethos than not] has been excellently tied to voting choices of the [strange-to-have-to-say-it] presently senior Senator from Minnesota, ex-SDS Hofstra student pot-smoking scruffy radical and present beneficiary of fine suits and tidy cosmetic makeover dentistry, Norman Coleman.
Please read this carefully written MnBlue link, for an excellent analysis of that Coleman tie-in to abuse of civil liberty situation. From its date, the MnBlue item was a Christmas present to other civil libertarians. It has already been linked to from Crabgrass, but it deserves both repeated linking, and repeated re-reading. It is about something that many of us should be incensed and much more vocal about. (Not that I doubt Al Franken will be on that message at some point between now and November).
Everyone, every individual in the ideological belief spectrum from those thinking socialism is a good thing to the Ron Paul wing of the GOP, each individual in that broad spectrum who believes privacy and freedom should be immune from heavy-booted unwarranted government intrusion should read that post.
Encroachment by the present federal executive branch upon aspects of freedom is something tyrants in other nations do regularly, and it is so very much against our Constitutional ways and aims that we should be in the streets and on our soapboxes howling about "never should have happened."
And we should blame every individual who under the false rubric of "War on Terror" allowed, facilitated, promoted or wanted such an erosion of decency and liberty.
And that clearly is a local focus on Norman Coleman.
It is something I explain in part by regarding Norman Coleman as a very, very weak and opportunistic man seeking a touch at power and willingly trading whatever level of good judgment and fairness he has for even a touch of power which is being quite greatly abused.
Part of the weakness I see in Norman Coleman is his willing, over-eager drift to affiliate with those allowing him a peripheral though obedient role in exercising abusive power. The man has just been too loyal and pliant a tool of George Bush and Dick Cheney, and he has been liking being so compromised and should be voted out resoundingly. While backtracking on two points in this post, I have absolutely no equivocation nor intent to backtrack from what I think of or say about Norman Coleman.
I also see Elwyn Tinklenberg as a weak and compromised man. Self-compromised. And I have said that more than once and will not backtrack from that. My view is across party lines and why I decline to be in the DFL party [with of course the GOP being on the whole an even less suitable fit for my personality and belief system]. Michele Bachmann is a total joke, a characture, while Elwyn Tinklenberg is a quite weak candidate and much of a poseur and characture himself.
I do not want to see nor care to see Elwyn Tinklenberg billboards that say how optimistic he feels himself to be, nor would I wholly believe it if he, as if seeing a great light while on the way to Damascus, were to suddenly start to recognize and criticize the abuses against freedom and Constitutional habeas corpus decency practiced by this Bush-Cheney-Coleman administration as strongly and cogently as Big E at MnBlue did.
Call it my own personality flaw, an unwillingness to suspend disbelief, to get beyond, "Sure Elwyn," were he to vigorously denounce such practices.
But back to the point - my dislike of Elwyn Tinklenberg should not have spilled over to attacking a common practice among other campaigns I like, or to negatively naming an individual campaign worker who was only writing and sending email promotional and solicitation material. Nor should I view use of communication technology by a campaign staff at an endorsement convention as somehow dark or inherently wrong primarily because I dislike their candidate. Nor should I view a reasonable and progressive use of communication technology as in any way at all equivalent to abusive use of intercept and detection technology by the Bushco gang or under the gang's questionable executive-order misauthorizations.
All those headset Tinklenberg staff people at the endorsement convention, to whatever degree they believed in the Tinklenberg candidacy as a good thing, were simply making it easier to manage their collective activity. The proper analogy is the coaching and teamwork and use of headset communication in an NFL context, which is justifiable and reasonable, and should not inspire any knee-jerk Luddite distrust of technology itself and those using it correctly.
I do not like [but can live with] the DFL decision to centralize its management of email contact and to have a centralized database of soft-touch people who give money as well as ideological support. The game of getting elected or not runs on money, it is how it is, and centralization is how the levers are to be operated, in the judgment of those running the DFL and having their hands on the levers. It is how the party chooses to go.
It is their party, their overall game, their decision-making, their gain or loss, and their consequences, so bless them.
Even with the occasional Elwyn Tinklenberg, their product mix has been better. For example, Mike Hatch, pluses and minuses (and even if truly as bad as Eric Black's extremist reporting of Hatch and Swanson indicates), nonetheless was a far, far better choice than Pawlenty last cycle. The best man lost.
It is up to individuals to segregate their campaign giving to individual candidates if they dislike one on the ticket, and it is the DFL party perogative to attempt to channel giving generically, where those running things can then allocate generic giving and generate due gratitude. My message being, give to the individual campaigns you support, always, not the party.
The foregoing corrects, in much detail and clearly with substantial digression, the first thing I needed to revise and extend remarks over. [Don't you love that "revise and extend" cliche? They never say "revise and shorten." Have you ever heard that? No, of course not. It is always "revise and extend." They are politicians after all.] Addressing the second matter is easier and shorter.
SECOND: NRRI, so far, has generally been very cooperative in providing requested public data when I have requested disclosure under Minn. Stat. Ch. 13. And they are busy people with other things to do, other demands on their time, so that their reasonableness that way has been appreciated.
I only hope the next request, or the one after that go as smoothly. It is and always must be an instance-by-instance thing. Yet the statute is reasonably clear on what is publicly accessible as a matter of citizen right, and what for policy reasons is excluded as expressly and narrowly outside of the otherwise overriding entitlement to gain disclosure. And each time busy people have to take time to comply. Each time should be appreciated, even with a controlling right of access by statute. Games always could be played, and so far there has been none of that from NRRI when I have requested things. Most recently personnel there have emailed me an item that fit within the range of things they have posted on their website, a January 2008 status report on the tailings-in-paving program they operate and administer. This was provided with an acknowledgement that while its public posting had been delayed the intent always was to disclose it in the identical fashion that earlier reporting of the same nature had been posted on their website.
I can carp a bit about not having as easily navigatable a website or site map as in the best of worlds they might, but my site navigation deficiencies might be more at fault than their web design - who's to definitively say?
In a post at about the same time that I was improperly critical of Chase Golding I also, here, and here, inappropriately foresaw getting data practices compliance from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, NRRI affiliates as "Upriver Into the Heart of Darkness."
For that misanticipation, I apologize. But my next request in my view will be a real humdinger, and I hope it will not be opposed or stiffled. There is a "contacts" database (that has been assembled by The Tinklenberg Group) of persons Elwyn and others in TTG contacted in promotion of the shipping and use of taconite tailings in paving, and names and contact information and context of past contacts apparently were logged. In one earlier Tinklenberg Group report to NRRI the express committment was made that the data would, in an organized electronic database or spreadsheet form, be conveyed from The Tinklenberg Group to NRRI and kept periodically updated via update e-communication from TTG.
Access to a copy of that database is my next public data request target. I have yet to write and email the request but the database was attained and assembled from public funds, for what has been characterized as a public purpose in line with NRRI mission goals, to be transferred by a retained private sector paid contractor to NRRI to there be used and maintained by public employees, and kept for public governmental purposes at a public governmental agency's facility. The quite narrow exceptions to Minn. Stat. Ch. 13 are inapplicable; and this time I approach the request with no "Heart of Darkenss" anticipation or misgivings.
As already indicated, I was wrong to have done that in the past. Things should progress this time as smoothly as in the past. That is my anticipation -- no Heart of Darkness. No stonewall. No inordinate delay. They have been busy but generally helpful and respectful people, with any delay being due to my lack of follow-up, and not any intent to avoid statutory duty. Things worked as the legislature, in passing a Data Practices Act, intended.
________________
photos from Google Images