[UPDATE: MinnPost reports well, here.]
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| This link. Is there any way to move this royal jackass to North Dakota? |
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Tevlin at Strib reporting on the House side of the abomination encapsulated the mood of the surreal:
Monday, amendments flooded into the speaker's podium like pleas from dying men. Tuesday was even worse, with more than 100.
Rep. Karen Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, for example, saw the open purse as a chance to grab some money for the poor, requesting $400 million in bonding to fix up public housing "creating the same number of [construction] jobs as the stadium, coincidentally."
Or not coincidentally.
Rep. Morrie Lanning R-Moorhead, sponsor of the stadium bill, called Clark's amendment "not germane" and "another attempt to spend money we don't have."
I swear, he did this with a straight face.
Julie Rosen. Bill sponsor. Where do people have their heads when electing such a person? I have more respect for Warren Limmer than for that gentlewoman. Even with Limmer babbling something about "Saks Fifth Avenue" with an aide hurriedly handing Limmer a note that it was "Goldman Sachs" that his conflict of interest amendment had in focus; he did that, really, it was televised; but at least he stood up and proposed the amendment and it was against conflict of interest, and while a drop in the bucket in terms of offensiveness of the entire Zygi - building union Angst thing, and an afterthought - but Limmer at least stood up and proposed it. A bandaid on a festering rotting carbuncle, but Limmer at least stood up and said the equivalent of "do something moral" today. Rosen, what to say - do you remember the actress who did such a great job as Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Rosen proposed an earlier token user fee thing, apparently, but the real user fee vote - the one with teeth - I want to say Sen. Howe of Red Wing proposed it and Kruse and Marty spoke in favor of it - that was the one that the hallway suits flipped over after a single vote approval.
Too steamed now over the mockery that happened to comb, now, through Senate Digest records on the amendments, and that is difficult with the press only reporting a final vote. However, I may later try to track down a few of the amendment recorded votes via the legislative website. If I do that, I will be posting a further update. Don't expect it. There now is to be a conference committee, and I agree with the Republicans who want to kill it and with Rep. Karen Clark's reported amendment aimed at showing how the public money, if spent, could be better spent - but in a way that would cut against the moneyed interests from New Jersey and their hired lobbying goons in suits. Per Clark's illustrative amendment the building trades would have a wash, job-wise, if the cash were to be spent in Clark's way, same job boost as giving it to Zygi. But responsible shepherding of government money is not the name of this game. Wilfare not welfare is the game. Shameful is the only word that comes to mind. And this thing, it has had publicity, but it's not the only shameful thing that comes from the St. Paul hill top. For a motto, they should try, "Shameful is our most important product." That Tevlin-Strib excerpt stated things well.
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This link. LA has been without an NFL team for 17 years. Blessed, in a sense. Their state government can be dysfunctional in other ways than ours. But it is all the same. Ownership by the 1%. State governments are merely another of their several asset groups.
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Bar room gambling curiously did not make Sheriff Bill's issues list. Neglect, not an intended omission, I have to guess. Yet he stood up before the cameras and defined who he is and what he advocates. Drunks gambling. But in running for a repeat term, he said he was for family values. In his family drunks gambling must be a hot item. He should have put that on his website. He does post "Their son Jason and his wife Alyssa have three children and are owners/operators of a small business in Cannon Falls, Minnesota." Is the "small business" a bar? [UPDATE - Apparently not. There is a remodeling contracting business, Butler Creek Basement Company, Phone: (507) 263-0537, Sole Proprietorship, Mr. Jason Ingebrigtsen (President). If there is a nephew or cousin having a direct tavern ownership, I have no clue how to track that down. Ditto, for any investment in a tavern. Reader help on the question in a comment would be helpful.]
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Regarding Sheriff Bill, there is this link, preserved separately via screen capture, posted Dec. 12, 2011 (days before the Amy Koch - Michael Brodkorb purge in the Senate) stating in part:
Electronic lottery, pulltabs, bingo considered for stadium
Those who push modernizing existing games say the Vikings, the state, local charities and small businesses all would come out winners.
Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, said everyone would benefit from his idea to allow businesses like bars and restaurants to sell lottery tickets via electronic devices that resemble slot machines.
King Wilson, who leads a coalition of the state’s charities that benefit from pulltabs and bingo, said the same thing about his proposal to allow those games to go electronic.
Supporters of the two proposals say electronic devices would attract new gamblers, especially younger ones. The proposals compete with each other, but legislators eventually could combine them into one stadium funding plan, perhaps with other aspects included as well.
[...] House Republicans, who he knows best, seem to favor allowing the state’s two horse-racing tracks to add casinos, Lanning said. But since some Republicans oppose any new gambling, Democrats will need to participate in a solution, and few of them support the so-called racinos.
The state’s top Democrat, Gov. Mark Dayton, has said for weeks that he leans toward the electronic pulltabs because the concept appears to have the best support across the legislative spectrum.
The governor said that he likes not only money coming to the state for a stadium, but the fact that charities would benefit, too.
On the other hand, gambling is divisive.
[...] What the Vikings do not pay, state and local officials must find if a stadium is to be built. That is where gambling comes in because all proposals cut the state in for some of the profits.
Ingebrigtsen’s proposal would, as he puts it, simply allow existing lottery games to be sold electronically and require a charity to receive profits from the five machines a bar would be allowed. Instead of a slot machine that randomly picks winners, electronic lottery machines would contain thousands of printed tickets, dispensed in order like happens now.
The Tavern League of Minnesota, which represents bars, estimates the state would get $92 million more a year from the electronic lottery. Under the state Constitution, some would go to natural resources programs, but $55 million would be available for stadium or other uses.
On top of that, new gamblers would send an average of $22,000 more a year to each charity that sponsors a game, Ingebrigtsen said, and local businesses that host the games would get an average $54,000 boost in profits.
The state Revenue Department estimates that if electronic pulltabs and bingo were legalized, the state could collect $72 million more a year.
“We believe there will be more people playing,” Wilson said of electronic pulltabs and bingo.
[...] Ingebrigtsen likes his video lottery proposal because it helps bars and other businesses that lost customers after the state lowered blood-alcohol content for drunken driving and outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants.
So urban and suburban - does your favorite restaurant list include operations that want to include gambling? Doing paper pull tabs at present? Of course not.
Somebody in Sheriff Bill's family or crony group must own a rural bar. A donor or key campaign supporter? Conflict of interest. Sure - If that's the case.
Otherwise how does the Tavern League of Minnesota have so much clout with Sheriff Bill, where key players are here, and here, with the Tavern League having this warm and fuzzy issue-oriented website. Screenshot time:
With it being clearly, in truth, barfly gambling to sustain rural bars, where exactly did this "cheritable gambling" euphemism arise, and why do you suppose it's grown legs so quickly among politicians of both parties?
Go figure.
Besides having a liking for gambling barflies, and having sympathy and a warm spot in the heart for smoke filled bars and drunks with blood alcohol levels between 0.08 and 0.1% (per the last paragraph of the quote above, before the screenshot), who is the man; asked another way, what's his voting record? A choice hater, clearly, here, here and here. Stand your ground with fireworks in hand, here and here. Drink, fine place a bet or two also, but no toking even if the doctor says it helps, here. Anti gay and unmarried couple civil rights, here. No love for Ellen Anderson. Loves nukes, not gay marriage, here and here. Against teacher FIFO, racino is okay, bullying is okay with him (presumably bullying among gambling barflies standing their ground would ring several of Sheriff Bill's bells). here, here, and here. Not easily finding right to work [for less] and voter ID positions, I can only extrapolate. The surprising thing to me about Sheriff Bill is he does not look like Ned Beaty in Smoky and the Bandit. All the rest is same old, same old, except for that bent for drunks and gambling, and especially gambling drunks, which you might find odd for a sheriff. Bars and barflies. He likes 'em.
I should add one comment about context - when Sheriff Bill stood up and made his impassioned plea for rural bar income flow, it was in support of the motion to reconsider the user fee supported proposition that had previously passed by a one vote margin. From the above, can you speculate about who in the hallway forced the reconsideration vote? To Zygi the amount is the issue, green is green regardles of whether barfly gambling or user fees are the cash flow source. He has to be indifferent, except for user fees possibly curbing how much he can get away hosing folks on luxury suites, authenic NFL team jerseys, and concessions. Since the user fee would be atop cost and Zygi-profit, perhaps his suit-thugs had a say too against the rational funding basis of user fees. It is hard to say, with all that off camera. This link.
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Sister-state Tavern League news, here and here. Them. Not us. Sure.