If you want to contribute fifty bucks to Pete Stauber and make him think it was me, or instigated by me, here is how.

Pete Stauber represents northern Minnesota's Iron Range idiots. Iron Range non-idiots vote Dem, and do not want to see his district irretrievably polluted with acid tailings runoff for over five hundred years; with that done for a few short term Iron Range jobs, which usually go to the idiots. To meet the headline, use this tracking link which Stauber's people embedded in an email from his auto-email account.

http://links.petestauberforcongress.com/u/click?_t=c3e2491d1f8d48eaa0a0352f181d016d&_m=7adf39654046420b9b156b2bf96e679f&_e=gByto_qYQbCYJLpRT4htnB7MSwGJxsSrE-XjSLq7zo0uTW6Zh0phY1H708S31qqplFYeqnZth_jqpQ09ZqQhdnZkTWRwZ4RTbdTf3SIdcjs2Hpp7mm50S8Vc9b7TUlzwBiJ1p7wbdPo76zZyruRV4QNGAWdHKsPrLzwe1gu1M1lNmS9siVxUskAnNmSWVVklLomg-IKQbdnu1yvtzrQfnrerF5KWuDEyqrE8gLWZY13JqrciXPGQZRgNFj2obil44PgGCwly_EiCjJfHb5Rf3GvCTY7JcSXByif-WyvArAn8XbyfXAbKyX83_o7DAjPx

Don't you hate tracking emails? 

Last, the link is copied carefully from the Stauber email. It is believed to be able to get you to a Stauber money sink, if you care to give the guy your money. "Believed" is used because the tracking link was NOT verified. There is no way I would click upon an offensive tracking link like that, but you might. Especially if you are an Iron Range idiot who voted for Stauber in the last election.

The post could be ended here. But no. Here is a websearch link = becky rom

Here is a websearch link = friends of the boundary waters wilderness

Blessed are the good guys, for they are protecting the earth.

Weasel report from the NY Times.

Link. Weasels are as weasels do.

So what? Pass the bill people want, or stay in DC working on it, Joe.

Strib locally written item blaring in its headline,

Biden will visit Minnesota to tout new infrastructure law

State will receive billions for roads, transportation, airports, high-speed internet and other projects.

Really? Big deal. It would make very, very many happy if the man stayed in DC to push the other bill, the one that the people want. Even the watered-down tepid thing BIDEN, via surrogates Manchin and Sinema gutted out of the original effort made by progressives to deliver for the population of the nation.

We are supposed to take this visit stunt seriously? Why in the world would we do that? Only inner party Dem self-deluded souls would think this helps their 2022 election chances. It does not. Passing the REAL bill might do it, but has Joe Biden shown any real will that way? In the Strib item:

The White House announced Friday that Biden will make a trip to Rosemount. Biden has already visited other parts of the United States to tout the infrastructure law as Democrats try to maintaintheir control of Congress in next year's midterm elections.

[...] Biden won Minnesota by about 7 percentage points in the 2020 election. But a September poll sponsored by the Star Tribune, MPR News, KARE 11 and Frontline found voters in the state were divided on Biden's job performance. The margin of sampling error for the poll was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The results showed that 51% disapproved of Biden's work as president, while 47% approved and2% were not sure.

This gimmick is not any reflection of decent job performance. It is the opposite. The job is in DC, Christsakes, not the  hustings. The man has hidden from the job and let his surrogate bill-killers do his dirty work on the REAL bill, and now brings the phony smile into the midwest. I am so impressed! (My feelings having already shown how impressed I am, with the man's inadequate performance, so far, with little hope he changes into something with a spine and a will to help people via a viable second bill. Joe, stay in DC and do your job.)

The people don't want bullshit, they want action. They've had bullshit enough for decades, from Trump, and that is the only sole reason your sorry record reached the White House. It was never about you Joe, it was always about him. You are doing exactly what those grudgingly voting for you expected. Serving money, not serving the people. Stay in DC and try the latter for a change.

An obit worthy of reader consideration. A former military officer.

 Links only. No excerpting. NYTimes, here.and here. AP reporting carried by SeattleTimes. NYT from 2005.  The man's PhD dissertation, "Method and the Morality of War." which was, "dedicated to the innocent victims of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Anybody subjected to enough effort and torment can become bedeviled, dispirited and broken. So, where is morality in war? Where is the accountability among government spook operatives? Among our world's Kissingers? What are fit and unfit priorities in military intervention in foreign nations?

Dark times threaten. Time to reread a book? One of those high school classics we all read, back then.

Hat tip to Christy for bringing the obit and story to my attention.

POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS: Sometimes it can be more than tortuously conforming a home video of statutory art to fit the YouTube rectangular format. It can touch content some might challenge as provocative, or wrongly stereotyping. Others might say art carries its own justifications, deserving respect for intended creative aspects. Are YOU judgmental or agnostic? We are not considering a statue of Robert E. Lee or Albert Pike.

 Free speech on the internet? This YouTube link.

From June of this year - not current news, but needing attention: "Speaking for myself, I don't know what the government was looking for when it snuck into my life. I am not the subject of an investigation and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing. But as a CNN journalist, myself and my newsroom clearly were being used as a tool by the Trump Justice Department. All of CNN is in this together. We have each other's back, always. President Biden has said the seizing of reporters' records will be stopped under his administration. But with all respect to him and his stated intentions, that is a promise of limited relevance. Unless new protections are codified, this could all happen again to any journalist. Secret proceedings, gag orders so CNN attorneys can't speak to me, and eight reporters being swept up in investigations with no explanation -- these are not part of a free press in the United States."

CNN is plain vanilla mainstream journalism, as is Breitbart, and government invasion of reporter privacy - expectations of privacy and need to protect sources - is a danger to the public being informed of excesses of government officials. As such, it is an evil.

Link. This linked item is where the headlined text leads to the balance of the author's analysis. Following that early text:

None of us should forget: America's armed forces take a vow to uphold the Constitution, and that includes the First Amendment protections for a free press.

Simply put, America's armed forces are willing to die to protect all of our rights, including freedom of the press. The Justice Department must find a way to absolutely protect a free, functioning press as well.

Covering wars and threats to national security often means uncovering what the government doesn't want us to know to find out essential truth.

[...] I had absolutely no knowledge that there were secret court proceedings against me in 2020 until late May 2021, when CNN's most senior attorney, David Vigilante, was cleared to tell me there was a letter from the Justice Department waiting for me at CNN's Washington bureau.

The letter was just a few lines long, from the now Biden Justice Department, notifying me they had my records but apparently no actual content. I also learned that CNN had successfully narrowed the scope from the original demand for more than 30,000 emails which included a huge amount of emails that clearly were unrelated to their investigation.

All of the material finally given to the Justice Department on a judge's orders involved communications over a two-month period in 2017. But it was not until 2020 that the Justice Department argued they needed to see my 2017 communications as what we believe was part of a national security leak investigation. We do not know why it took years for this to even unfold.

All of this is a sheer abuse of power in my view-- first against CNN and myself, since our work is and should always be protected by the First Amendment. But more importantly and more significantly, it is an abuse against the free press in this country, whether you are a television network correspondent or a reporter at a small town newspaper uncovering wrongdoing. [or a blogger]

I started my career at a small town community newspaper, and looking back, it may well have been the best job I ever had. The desk chief gave me free rein to talk to anyone and everyone, and soon I had people calling me up to offer tips and information. My beat largely focused on the big developers that had come to town.

I wonder now, more than ever, what happens if those with power try to intimidate reporters whose small newsrooms, like mine in those days, can't afford legal teams to fight back. How then will the people in that small town even know about potential wrongdoing?

Even if you don't like the news media, take notice: Secret Justice Department proceedings against the free press affect everyone in this country. That is what I would hope Merrick Garland takes away from this entire sorry affair.

[italics added to headline and quoted text] The FBI can go to your local library, after in a secret court having attained a secret court order, and review your book borrowing history? Why? Because they can. Because Congress wrote that as law.

Raw law:  Unless and until the entire secret court system is disbanded - where in secret pliant and/or lazy judges rubber stamp requests, this is NOT a free country. It is a surveillance state, instead. Temporary secret status may in very rare cases be needed until shortly thereafter the surveilled person gets notice, but that is not what we have. We have abusive use of secret proceedings. That is wrong, leads to abuse and evil, and needs to be disappeared by legislation fixing the earlier legislation allowing such pure horseshit to happen in the U.S. of A.

There are no two ways about it. More may be published in succeeding posts, but this is all for now. If CNN, a major mainstreamer, can be subject to such horseshit, what about the rest of us? 

That is what the editorial writer asks; and you know the answer. The boot of the State on the throat of the citizenry is not a good way to run a nation.  Yet there it is poised over the throat of each of us, particularly so for impecunious web posting individuals who might write something a "sensitive" official might dislike.

So - Joe's AG says, "Not on my watch." What right to a remedy do you have if Joe's AG is lying in public? 

Again, you know the answer. 

Sue the government? Piss your life savings and much time down that rathole? Get real. It seems "The Patriot Act" needs renaming, "The Screw the Patriot Act," coming to mind as a simple correction giving notice of what too large a part of the purpose of that statute being precisely what the rename suggestion says.

"Silence is golden" is an old saying with too many loose strings attached.

But we all know that. And each of us is doing so much to fix things?

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

__________UPDATE__________

United States v. Zubaydah

That case name, as a web search. There is much online. 

We live in times without due accountability. Proof? Two buttheads skate. Welcome to twisted times.

 McCarthy.

Rittenhouse.

The Times recognizes real news that the Internet's Breitbarts and MSNBCs might miss.

 Regard "might miss" as inclusive; e.g. might have missed, might intend to miss, might not know what to think, might be lost on a senior editor's desk, might have been reported where the Crabgrass guy failed to look; whatever.

Real news that others missed? Yes/no?

‘QAnon shaman’ Jacob Chansley jailed for 3½ years over Capitol riot

new

Keiran Southern Los Angeles

Wednesday November 17 2021, 6.20pm, The Times

[...]

The one that got mainstream coverage as far away as New Zealand - was the "white, blond and a good job" ceremonial token wrist slap sentence. This Shaman's fate is quite something else. Where might we find good cause for this discrepancy?

Discrepancy in sentencing. Discrepancy in mainstream coverage. Was it the head gear, or the face paint?

...............................

Well, Breitbart got it. Looked there as search enough, and their headline is:

Jan. 6 rioter who carried spear and wore horns got 41 months

Well. There. I second sourced it. The story must be true. Skeptical readers are urged to do their own web searching. 

Well, second sourced the headlines, while noting actual 3-1/2 years would be 42 months; with 41 being close enough and there was time served.

And, gee, looking at the Breitbart byline, they carried an AP feed.

It was a good theory that mainstream missed it. Facts intervened. Lesson?

Biden goes outside the White House to sign the one bill that got passed while the other has been left to languish.

MSN's image source - click to enlarge, if you care to

Biden, with entourage. We're all Soooooo Very very Happy. 

Now pass the other bill, both Houses, or wish you had, election day, 2022.

How about that Schumer! He surely knows a photo-op when in one, and if among others, he still makes it his. Do you suppose everyone there got an honorary signing pen replica? Or was being within the photo-op honor enough?

I remember Cecil B. DeMille film trailers, the bill signing image just reminds me of that, from memories formed during my childhood.

Democrat Beto O’Rourke running for Texas governor in 2022

 WaPo reports. If supporting this moderate seems an idea to you, Beto will need money to compete. For Crabgrass, in his run against Ted Cruz a contribution was sent. This cycle Crabgrass contributions are going to be to progressives only, so no cash from here for Beto. Readers will have their own viewpoints.

MSN carries a Politico feed. Beto has posted a video on Twitter. See, also, Dallas Morning News, here, which shows that tweet and others.

Brief Crabgrass search was unable to find a campaign homepage or an actblue page, so readers interested in supporting the campaign will have to do their own web searching in the next few days. 

Search = beto o'rourke ballotpedia [past week] yielded no bp page yet for the Guv run, but readers can check the search later. This Dallas Voice link was all the search returned when run right before publishing this post.

Bannon indicted.

AP, in a post carried by Strib: 

Officials in both Democratic and Republican administrations have been held in contempt by Congress, but criminal indictments for contempt are exceedingly rare. The most recent notable examples of criminal penalties for not testifying before Congress date to the 1970s, including when President Richard Nixon's aide G. Gordon Liddy was convicted of misdemeanor charges for refusing to answer questions about his role in the Watergate scandal.

Democrats who voted to hold Bannon in contempt praised the Justice Department's decision, saying the charges reinforce the authority of Congress to investigate the executive branch and signal potential consequences for those who refuse to cooperate.

"The days of defying subpoenas with impunity are over," tweeted House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who sits on the Jan. 6 panel and also led Trump's first impeachment inquiry. "We will expose those responsible for Jan 6. No one is above the law."

The chairman of the Jan. 6 panel, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, told reporters at an event in his home state of Mississippi on Friday that he will recommend contempt charges against Meadows next week.

Thompson and the vice chairwoman of the panel, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said in a statement: "Mr. Meadows, Mr. Bannon, and others who go down this path won't prevail in stopping the Select Committee's effort getting answers for the American people about January 6th, making legislative recommendations to help protect our democracy, and helping ensure nothing like that day ever happens again."

When do they call Trump? Will he take the Fifth, if/when they do? Or will he suffer contempt charges instead? That seems most likely.

In the past, Ramsey made its "Town Center" mistake, in part via a misleading referendum wording - telling half a story. Cottage Grove voted down a clearly worded referendum, meaning what, (beyond what you say and how you said it matters).

 Meaning: Honesty Rocks!

Planners want every Minnesota town under Met Council jurisdiction to do "Comprehensive Plans." For developers to read and cherry pick opportunity, and once opportunity is recognized, to only move via TIF bribing, one town against the others to give the most to the developers. Developers are in it for the money. Planners are in it to gum up things. (Planners might disagree.)

Cottage Grove, Comp Plan, and Community Center planning document.

Cottage Grove fairly worded its referendum. It was defeated.

If you care to see how deceitful a ballot question can be; in comparison to the fairness shown by Cottage Grove; here, Advisory Question No. 3. (From among seven 2001 City of Ramsey ballot questions, four immediate, three "advisory.")

 Do you want a Town Center with restaurants, shopping and other amenities along the Highway 10 Corridor?

Who would not want shops and restaurants; yet a significant percentage of voters could smell a rat. As in who was being set up to pay more taxes for what?  A giant housing expansion was planned, Met Council loved it along the then-planned Northstar Commuter Rail route, with implied speculation that shops and restaurants would somehow subsequently spring up. Call it an intentional big lie, or -

Call it "The Ramsey Way." As the town was governed back then, better, since.

Bless the government of Cottage Grove for being fair to their citizens. That is how government should behave. Bless all those who, knowing the scope of the question, voted one way or the other.

Deceit breeds dissatisfaction and dissent. Honesty is the best policy. Ramsey Town Center from the start was driven by motives good and bad; via judgment, bad.

And Met Council still pushes TOD, standing for Transit Oriented Development.

In German "Tod" means death. Curiously, TOD was the acronym underlying Northstar planning. And where is it now . . .

Strib, locally authored content - buried in the tail part of the item,"Republican Rep. Tom Emmer said in a statement that 'the House voted on a bill that directs only a fraction of its overall spending towards improving roads and bridges, and lays the groundwork for passage of President Biden's multi-trillion dollar socialist wish list.'" What? Not Biden's, Nancy Pelosi's and Steny Hoyer's ultra-socialist agenda? If you want to say something ignorant, why not make it really ignorant?

With Emmer's analytical statement buried, Strib headlines - 

Rep. Ilhan Omar only House member in Minnesota delegation to break party ranks on bipartisan infrastructure bill

The House voted Friday to pass a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure package. 

By Hunter Woodall Star Tribune

November 5, 2021 — 11:53pm

 

Deep. But not so deep that you need hip-waders. 

Just a point: "[...] to break party ranks on bipartisan infrastructure bill [...]"

Party ranks? "Bipartisan bill?" - What am I not getting?

How exactly do you have "party ranks" on any real, actual, non-phony "bipartisan" measure? Ah, it's the "bipartisan" misnomer that confuses. Yet, strangely, all of mainstream media use the misnomer. Repeatedly. That's called "journalism." Another misnomer, for what actually gets posted. 

The real term for MSM content, begins with a "Prop" and ends with a "ganda."

Two AP items Strib carried about the bill the House passed with six Democrats voting no. Each item worth reading.

Here (Automobile related). Here.

What next? Who does what?

________UPDATE________

Guardian, here. With the man's ending of his last sentence, I hesitate to get drawn into commenting about his primary postulate, beyond pointing out the defining, deafening silence from organized labor when early in Biden "honeymoon" days the fifteen buck minimum wage got scuttled. Progressives did speak up. Without labor solidarity toward the nation's most exploited workers, the answer of atta-boying union membership seems weak. With UAW got-ours special goodies in the bill that got passed while the bill for the rest of us got bullshitted, the man might be said to see the problem in much of its aspects, but to be looking with blinders on past how Reagan was endorsed and voted in by air traffic controllers, as to likelihoods, in suggesting his view of there being a simple, clear solution, his way. 

Is there a reliable statistic in the public domain of the level of MEGA hat wearing among rank and file building trades union workers? Before and then after the 2016 election, i.e., was there much of a learning curve? Among rank-and-file? There was none about Reagan. If the unions did notice and comment when appropriate about Trump usage of union vs non-union labor in his building empire, I missed it. It seems no one was asking that question, according to mainstream reporting. Apart from the communications workers and nurses, it seems union money backed Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, neither time backing Bernie, who clearly cared about the most exploited workers and sought their fiscal betterment.

Open Secrets, here and here. And for the 2018 mid-terms. Not really moving the needle off same old, same old. At least Joe Manchin never made the top twenty in those years. Sinema did.

Terry McAuliffe was governor for a while, and lost election days ago. Does any reader know of any positive thing the man did during his entire lifetime? He ran on his Clinton chops, which was a losing proposition. A career politician becoming a millionaire at it, best known as a fundraiser and not a manager, he raised funds, but so what? Lee Atwater raised funds.

 In a primary he won decisively. That was among other career politicians, with primary turnout not as great as if a progressive had been another favored Dem option. Local Dem inner party sorts usually turn out for primaries.

McAuliffe ran as a middle of the road schmuck, not as having any strong identity to share with workers and the poor. He was, with a few different wrinkles, Schumer. 

As such, who'd be enthusiastic, to door knock or phone bank?

Now there is great navel gazing, saying progressives who advocate what poll after poll shows to be what people want, were the reason McAuliffe lost. That is a lie.

McAuliffe lost because more special election voters thought a Repubican better. Better than Repubican-lite, the Clinton flavor.

This was not a bellweather contest, and press folks saying otherwise are hyping a lie. Not that press folks doing so is novel. Just that this time it is happening.

In all the coverage, have you seen any strong statement of what issues McAuliffe was running on? Yeah. Me neither. His loss is a so-what thing, so why are no MSM outlets saying so? Jiving a dull story? So?

Republican mainstram outlet Townhall explains what the Republicans said and did and won on, in order to defeat McAuliffe. Nowhere in that explanation do inner party Republican spokespersons accuse McAuliffe of being too much a progressive populist. Instead:

McAuliffe Slammed For Record as a 'Career Politician'

Reagan McCarthy

|

Posted: Jun 09, 2021 10:25 AM

Yes. Not AOC first time challenging the system; nor Cori Bush doing the same. Instead, big time same old was the mantra. In the story - from June, before voting:

 

Virginia voters favor “fresh leadership” in GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin over McAuliffe’s “career politician” record, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) argued after the former governor was declared the Democrat nominee.

“The contrast between career politician and establishment insider Terry McAuliffe and successful businessman and political outsider Glenn Youngkin is stark,” RGA Executive Director Dave Rexrode said in a release. “The stench of corruption follows McAuliffe wherever he goes, and voters across the Commonwealth are looking for fresh leadership after nearly a decade of failures from the McAuliffe-Northam regime. The RGA looks forward to exposing Terry McAuliffe’s litany of broken promises and misdeeds between now and November.”

The GOP gubernatorial arm is also painting McAuliffe as “corrupt,” “soft on crime,” and an “ultimate insider,” pointing to his previous tenure as governor.

Youngkin, a political outsider, also criticized McAuliffe’s record as a career politician.

Voters from across the political spectrum agree that we need a new kind of leader to bring a new day to Virginia. Get ready, because Terry McAuliffe will default to the same political games he’s played his entire life.

— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) June 9, 2021

I’m confident that voters will not choose a recycled, 40-year political insider and career politician who pretends to be a businessman, who talks big but doesn’t deliver, and who failed Virginians the first time he was governor.

— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) June 9, 2021

McAuliffe lost because all the things Youngkin was saying are true. Not because Bernie has a conscience, but that McAuliffe was vulnerable over the inadequacies of the one he has, regardless of Bernie and progressive policies. Ms Clinton lost the same way. At least McAuliffe is not blaming James Comey. Or Bernie.

McAuliffe is right in there with the Podesta brothers. Lost and greed filled.

MoJo, a while ago has covered McAuliffe's past, chronologically, here and here.

Anybody saying McAuliffe lost by being too much a champion of Medical for All or taxing the wealthy or wanting a living-minimum-wage is blowing smoke. Had he been such a champion, he could have won. But he did not even claim such policies as his. He lost because he stood mainly for Terry McAuliffe's political past and future and the cash flow it offered, had he won. Donor beloved, and donor trusted while the same donors have no trouble living with the victorious Republican; they are pragmatic and adaptable while owning either outcome.

________UPDATE_______

This is why Terry McAuliffe lost - chapter and verse, years earlier than this November - being a career political hack can bite back:

Why Terry McAuliffe Endorsed Joe Biden

By Isaac Chotiner

March 4, 2020

The former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe says Joe Biden’s momentum since the South Carolina primary is like nothing he has ever seen.Source Photograph by Melina Mara / The Washington Post / Getty

Joe Biden won the vast majority of states that voted on Super Tuesday, among them Texas, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Virginia, establishing himself as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for President. In the days before the primaries, Biden had received a remarkable series of endorsements from current and former Democratic elected officials, including his former rivals Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Beto O’Rourke, as well as Virginia’s former governor, Terry McAuliffe, who has spent his life in Democratic politics, previously serving as the head of the Democratic National Committee and as a close adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

There's more, an interview with McAuliffe, back then -

Isaac Chotiner: Governor, how are you? [...] You have been in politics for a long time. How do you understand the consolidation around Joe Biden in the last seventy-two hours?

Well, I think tonight is nothing short of shocking. I have never in my life seen anything like what we have seen with the momentum coming out of South Carolina. [...] and, once Joe showed that he would win a majority of the African-American community, and could win in rural and urban parts of South Carolina, people said, “That is who we need to rally behind.” Many people didn’t think Bernie could beat Trump, and they wanted to find the alternative, and they found Joe after South Carolina.

O.K., but why didn’t this consolidation happen earlier? You have been in the back rooms of Democratic politics a long time. And you yourself didn’t endorse until recently.

[...] And then, of course, Super Tuesday, with this giant constellation of states, with a tremendous amount of money, and that was the process that really forced people’s hands because you just plain run out of money.

My process was: I was going to run for President. I spent a lot of time with Joe Biden. I went over in early April and had a three-hour dinner with him. He showed me all of his data, and his path to victory, and I looked at that and they needed help in Virginia, and [...] my wife signed on with Joe immediately. I thought the best role I could play as a former chairman of the national Party, who had worked on many campaigns, was to be a senior statesman on television, [...]

Did you speak to President Obama or other people in the Party before you made your decision?

[...] I have had a forty-year relationship with Joe Biden. It wasn’t ever a question who I was going to go with. [...]  I told him right after New Hampshire I would endorse him, and let’s figure out the correct timing for it.

[An aide cuts in.]

McAuliffe aide: Hey, Isaac, one quick point. One of the things the governor was adamant with me for the longest time—and, Governor, just correct me if I am wrong here—is that he wanted African-American voters to have their say, and, once they had their say, considering they have been the backbone of the Party, it was easier for him to say, “This is what I wanted to see, now I have seen it, and they have spoken so demonstrably in Joe Biden’s favor.”

McAuliffe: Well, the point I kept making on television, Isaac, was that I wanted to see who could build a coalition. [...] My whole point was that I want to know who can win the African-American community. Bernie Sanders did well in Iowa and New Hampshire. Can he expand his coalition, and can he expand his base and attract African-American voters, who are the absolute backbone of our party? And, in South Carolina, he couldn’t do that.

So, if Bernie had done well with the African-American vote, you would have endorsed him?

[Laughs.] If Joe had gotten blown out in South Carolina, there would have been no need to do it, because the campaign would have been over, as you know. He put his firewall there.

[...] Representative James Clyburn, whose endorsement made a huge impact in South Carolina—

Huge!

—said he was concerned about the organization of the Biden campaign. You said you had seen some of Biden’s data, but is this something you have any concern about, going forward?

Listen, Isaac, I have said on television that I don’t want to be out criticizing him, but, when the Vice-President came to Norfolk the other day, I rode with him in the car, and [...] he was open to all of this, bringing more people on. Our point is that we need to add on to it. And here is the thing, Isaac, this is why I am really fired up over tonight. He won all these states without any resources. He is now going to have plenty of resources. We now go to Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio, on March 17th. He was averaging five million dollars a day over the past couple of days. He has the resources now. He is open to bringing in anyone, and we are all making recommendations to get the best organizers to put them on the ground. I am one of the chairs of Organizing Together, where we are really building organizations for the six key swing states. This is something I do all the time. So I think he is in very good shape now.

There has been concern that Hillary Clinton lost because Trump was able to paint her as a figure of the establishment who had been in Washington too long. Is that something you are concerned about here, and how does Joe Biden fight that?

[...] Now, listen, we gotta have a message that appeals to everyone. We are probably going to go through a pretty tough cycle for the next couple weeks, to be honest with you, between Bernie and Joe, [...] and Biden’s message has to be a compelling message. Build unity, but also bring those young voters in. I think it is absolutely critical. In 2016, Isaac, we had ninety-two million people who did not vote, and in those three states that we lost by seventy-seven thousand, three hundred and sixty thousand people voted for a third-party candidate. We are not going to have that this time. [...] Biden is putting out a compelling message about bringing us together, bringing the world back together, empathy, patriotism. And we are going to win this thing. But it is going to be a grind.

What’s your relationship with Bernie?

I don’t really have a relationship. I was a governor, and I don’t ever spend time with senators or House members.

Really? You don’t spend time with senators or House members?

[...] Chuck Schumer is a friend. You know, I see a lot of them. But Bernie is not someone I have socialized with. But if he is the nominee, Isaac, I am all in.

Playing ball with Clyburn is what it is. If people really thought about whose money is behind Clyburn, and how he serves that money, he might have a lesser voice than now. But McAuliffe, Clyburn, Biden, Manchin - their money bosses are the same people, and if Virginia voters have had enough, they had little choice, but they exercised it. Biden was not Trump, which was enough, but his lack of coattails proved his lack of any real strong popularity with regular working people, who Biden historically screwed the way the bankers told him they wanted it (e.g., barring student loans from bankruptcy rights business debtors such as Enron fully enjoy). 

-------------------

And "Chuck Schumer is a friend." Of McAuliffe, and with that friendship - he lost. 

An entrenched career politician liking Biden and Schumer. Great resume? Or something else?

Who will primary Schumer next chance to do so? Good question. The bet here is it will not be AOC. We'll see. She seems to be growing into liking the House. It's fit.

Identity politics is divide and conquer, and unfortunately it is currently at play, both parties, and that is very bad for the nation.

_________FURTHER UPDATE________

Expanding on that last sentence. At the heart of things identity politics is racism.

With McAuliffe's and the aide's comments quoted above, black voters [a/k/a African-Americans, per the McAuliffe terminology] are singled out as a block with special mojo, according to McAuliffe and his aide; and according to Biden agreeing to name a female woman of color as VP. With all the fine choices, he instead picked Harris, and has appointed multiple "identity" people to his cabinet and staff.

It is racism, going unchallenged, while Trump's counter, appeal to white racism, gets doom, gloom and shame. Two sides of the same coin do not differ greatly except that Jim Crow was real and black people, as a group, have suffered from white dominance. The answer? Move the Democratic party back to a workers' party, emphasizing the need to protect the poor, independent of race, from the avarice of the monied politically dominant privileged few. But end identity politics based on any measure beyond economic exploitation. In effect, join into and on the other side of the class warfare the wealthy have over the history of the nation waged against the rest of the people of the nation. Fight back. And that means sidetracking Clyburn because he, Pelosi, and Hoyer are each an old tool of the wealthy. Replace the power Clyburn holds with power shared among progressive party people, independent of race but focused upon fair policy reform. Anything short of that will have racism remaining rampant and strengthening, as Trump and his Party remain who they are, while digging in their heels for the fight. 

When both parties bow to Mammon, as Clyburn seems inclined to do, the situation is what it is today, and McAluiffes in the party do the hustle, without any real bustle behind their emptiness and tactics - tactics with no strategy differing from the other Party. In contests between real Republicans and Republican-lite, the real ones will win and they are meaner than the owned Dem poseurs that follow Clinton footsteps.

Some may be upset that McAuliffe lost. Count me out of that grouping. The Democratic Party needs cleansing. Divide and conquer needs to be opposed.

"Stronger Together" the song was not something that helped Ms. Clinton. Notice how the identity politics terminology (and its singer) were absent from the Clyburn-Biden-Bloomberg followup to the Clinton debacle. They lied about "Build Back Better" as within their intent, and Manchin was then later used as the puppet with the knife. Biden never wanted to empower the weak. He knew his place. He knows his actual base. He serves concentrated capital. Bankers and other manipulators.

Dems of the Clinton faction lost Virginia. Quick, blame Bernie and the Squad. Then, get analyzed and debunked. People get tired of the dumpster fire.

 Dumpster fire image, from here.

Extended excerpting from here.

 A Wall Street Journal editorial on November 4 spun its view of what is at issue for the Democratic Party: “Voters warn Democrats to walk away from the Sanders-Pelosi agenda.” The Democrats’ own leadership quickly agreed with this take, playing the blame game against the Progressive Caucus for insisting on economic reforms that opinion polls have reported are precisely what voters say they want.

But these are not the policies that the party’s major donors want. What really is at issue is just whom the Democratic Party (and their duopoly partners the Republicans too, of course) support: corporate lobbyists and the Donor Class, or wage-earning voters seeking economic policies that benefit them as employees, consumers and debtors.

Can there really be doubt as to what is causing the apathy of voters to support the Clintonite Virginia candidate Terry McAuliffe? Was his loss really because voters opposed Sanders and the Congressional Progressive Caucus as radical extremists for supporting the policy platform that President Biden himself ran on and which got Democrats elected? Was it that Democrats are not sufficiently supporting their Wall Street and corporate donors and lobbyists, and that somehow voting for McAuliffe might empower Bernie Sanders, AOC and the Squad?

[...] In today’s U.S. political duopoly the role of the Democratic Party is to protect the Republicans from attacks from the left. What the Republicans and centrists want is the “hard” business infrastructure program, not its pro-labor elements. The Progressives rightly warn that their only opportunity to get the pro-voter BBB version approved by Congress is to tie it to Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. Their fear is that Manchin will make good on his preference to wait a half year (meaning “never” in political time) before submitting the BBB that was downsized first from $6.5 billion to $3.5 billion, and now to a reported $1.8 billion.

Another popular element criticized as being too pro-labor to appeal to voters is dental and vision care for Medicare recipients, and payments for hearing aids and home health care. As medical and health insurance costs squeeze family budgets, most voters also back negotiating drug prices to stop the price gouging by the pharmaceutical companies. Governments throughout the world have long been doing this. But the “centrists” threatened to exclude it, and finally proposed some reduction in the most exorbitant monopoly prices by promising a give-back for their drug-company donors in the form of more patent protection (for research initially funded by the government itself). The aim is to prevent other drug companies from producing low-priced generic versions after the patents expire.

Student debt relief has been drastically cut back, along with plans two free years of community college. One after another, Biden’s campaign promises are being broken – with Biden himself disowning them and showing impatience at how long it is taking the Progressives to surrender to “reality”.

Already thrown overboard at the start of the Biden Administration his promise to raise the minimum wage. The Senate parliamentarian pretended that this could not be submitted as a “reconciliation” agenda, on the ground that it did not affect federal revenue. That was nonsense, of course. Raising the minimum wage would reduce federal subsidies to families below the poverty level – a subsidy that has long saved Walmart and other minimum-wage employers dollar for dollar by enabling them to pay less than the actual living wage, with food stamps and other transfer payments making up the gap.

[...] Neoliberal Clintonite centrists vetoed Progressive proposals to pay for their program by passing one of the most popular taxes of all: the carried-interest tax loophole that frees financial speculators and money managers from having to pay income tax on their profit share and even management fees, lowering the rate to the capital-gains tax rate. The heavy hand of Wall Street campaign donors far outweighs what voters want – including reversing the Trump Administration’s income-tax cuts for the wealthiest classes.

While downsizing these early popular elements, Congress has increased its giveaway to the Donor Class in an attempt to win them over. Most egregious is cutting taxes for the wealthiest home owners, especially on the East Coast, by raising the income-tax deductibility of property taxes – the State and Local Tax (SALT) – from $10,000 to $72,500. As head of the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Bernie Sanders sounded exasperated on election-day Tuesday when he explained that this $400 billion giveaway to the wealthiest 5 percent was so large, that “the top 1% would pay lower taxes after passage of the Build Back Better plan than they did after the Trump tax cut in 2017. This is beyond unacceptable.”

[...] The Democratic leadership argues that failure to raise subsidies and tax breaks for the economy’s wealthiest rentier layer while cutting back support for wage-earners will threaten their electoral prospects – by reducing their fundraising appeal to the Donor Class.

The mainstream press chimes in with the view that pro-labor policies are so radical that they will frighten most middle-class voters as an attack on property and their own hopes to somehow join the ranks of the rich someday. President Biden is blaming Progressives for “blocking” the program by trying to preserve the policies that most voters actually want, and which he himself ran on in his presidential campaign a year ago.

But most voters are wage-earners, after all. And many need child support and other social welfare spending, and lower drug prices and other living costs. Voter polls in Virginia reported that economic issues were their most important concern, as they are in most of the United States.

The problem is that pro-labor social policies are not what the major lobbyists and campaign donors want for themselves and their clients. This that raises the obvious question: Did Democrats lose on Tuesday because their leadership was supporting opposing what their campaign contributors want instead of the Progressive agenda that most voters say want and what they voted for last November?

[...] Translating the concentration of wealth into political control has been accelerating since the 1980s, and almost all increase in U.S. wealth and income in the year and a half since the Covid-19 outbreak struck in spring 2020 has accrued to the One Percent in the form of rising stock, bond and real estate prices. In the non-financial economy, prices charged by the oil, pharmaceutical and IT monopolies have led the rise, while housing prices have risen nearly 20 percent in the last twelve months. These sectors are the largest lobbyists and political campaign contributors.

The Democratic leadership policy is to back the candidates who are able to raise the most money. For most candidates the lion’s share come from these lobbyists and special interests, for whom their donations are a business investment. Only a minority of progressive candidates have been able to raise enough small sums from many individuals to become political players.

Upon taking office, President Biden said that nothing would really change. This was the opposite of Barack Obama’s slogan of “hope and change,” but it was simply more honest. The Biden Administration not only has maintained Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, it has increased them under the BBB’s SALT provision. Biden has extended offshore oil drilling rights, and policies benefiting the financial and corporate sectors.

This is called being a “centrist” or “moderate.” If the world is polarizing between the One Percent and the 99 Percent, between creditors and debtors, monopolists and consumers, where is the middle ground? The Chinese have a proverb: “He who comes to a fork in the road and tries to go two roads at once will get a broken hip joint.” Being a moderate means not interfering with the economic trends that are polarizing the U.S. economy between the rentier One Percent at the top and the increasingly indebted 99 Percent.

That is the situation confronting today’s economy. Refusing to take steps to change the dynamics that are enriching the oligarchy means not reversing or even slowing the trends that are polarizing the economy. The Democratic Party leadership has opposed the influence of the Progressive Congressional Caucus from the beginning. This is oligarchy, not democracy. It is not even the largely empty formalities of political democracy, to say nothing of substantive economic democracy.

What really is democracy, after all? It is the ability of voters to legislate the policies that they want – and which presumably are in their economic and social interests. But the process is manipulated by the DNCC’s reliance on the Donor Class. Its political program is simply an advertising vehicle, with no “truth in advertising” regulation.

The question is, can it be reformed? Can democracy succeed without replacing the Democratic Party leadership with an altogether different political system from today’s Democratic-Republican duopoly with its common set of donors?

What I cannot understand is why the Progressive Caucus has not insisted on naming their own supporters to the DNCC.

The current Democratic impasse shows that no progress can be made without changing the institutional structure of American politics. It seems that the only way to do this is to make sure that the Democratic Party loses so irrevocably in 2022 and 2024 that it is dissolved enough to enable the Progressives to revive the near corpse.

The Democrats’ Identity Politics – Any Identity Except That of Wage Earners

The Democratic role is to protect the Republican party from challenges from the left. Its tactic has been to replace the traditional economic concerns of voters as wage earners, consumers, debtors and, in a rising proportion of cases, as renters faced with losing their homes if they fall into arrears as rents and housing prices are soaring.

Identity politics is a strategy to fragment the wage-earning majority of voters into separate ethnic, racial and gender identities. That distracts attention from their class consciousness whose interests do not match those of the Donor Class that has gained control of the Democrat-Republican duopoly. This explains the DNCC’s refusal to back progressive candidates.

Instead of appealing to wage earners, the Democratic leadership since the 1960s has aimed at getting voters to think of themselves as hyphenated Americans. Half a century ago it was Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans and so forth, with patronage along ethnic lines in the big cities.

Today the identity politics has broadened to aim at women – especially white suburban women (whose support they lost in Virginia), the Hispanic vote (which also faded this week), and support from black voters mobilized by House Majority Whip James Clyburn and what has been called the Black Misleadership Council (whose ethnic support finally is weakening as voters look at who their campaign contributors are). The Democrats’ calculation has been something like, “OK, we’ve written off the working class. But maybe we can get some voters to think of themselves as some other identity.” They’ve pandered to black voters with cultural applause, but not economic benefits. They’ve sought Hispanic support, but that is falling away as the Democrats hesitate to give economic support to low-income workers with families, whom they readily write off when offered enough Donor Class money from corporate lobbyists. The effect of cultural pandering to identity politics fails when voters see their economic condition as being the most important political issue.

It can be argued the man is wrong. It can be argued that Joe Biden is bright. It can be argued that Joe Biden did not turn his back on promises, and is not using Joe Manchin as front man for Biden not caring to deliver on promises, while needing a convenient way out of being held at fault by voters who believed he honestly wanted things his candidacy said it was championing.

The opinion at Crabgrass: Dumpster fire. The more Clintonians the Party runs, the more defeats. Clinton, hereself, after all lost to a clown. One may ask what did that loss have to do with absence of a learning curve; so figure out 2024. As a hint, watch 2022, with Dem conservatives running and losing.

 

NSO and Candiru get blacklisted. Most Crabgrass readers will say, "What? Who? Why? Whose blacklist?" So give them Guardian links to explain.

Guardian here and here. No effort was made to see if reporting of the significant step was generally covered in MSM postings. Readers are invited to follow up on that possibility.

Any spyware firm calling itself or its main product "Candiru" is asking for it.

Democrat Shontel Brown won election in Cleveland.

 Outcome of second House special election in Ohio uncertain.

PBS Link. Quote:

A second special election is taking place in Ohio on Tuesday, this one for the open seat in the 15th Congressional District. Republican Mike Carey, a longtime coal lobbyist, and Democrat Allison Russo, a two-term state representative and public policy consultant, are competing to succeed Republican Rep. Steve Stivers, who resigned in April to become CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce after a decade in Congress.

The winner will fill the remainder of Stivers’ term and, like Brown, will face reelection in 2022.

More than 377,000 Ohioans had voted early as of Monday afternoon, either by absentee ballot or at early in-person voting locations, according to Secretary of State Frank LaRose. He said that was nearly 18% more early ballots than had been cast at the same point in 2019.

LIVE RESULTS: Virginia’s governor’s race

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Carey, calling him a “courageous fighter” and visiting the state to campaign for him. President Joe Biden endorsed Russo, who raised more money in the district than any Democrat in history.

Brown’s election in the 11th Congressional District marks a win for establishment Democrats, who sought to defend the district against a takeover by progressives. Her backers included Hillary Clinton, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn and several labor unions.

But victory may be short-lived.

Already, Brown’s defeated primary opponent, progressive Nina Turner, has begun campaigning for the full congressional term up for grabs in 2022.

The teaser link about Virginia's Guv race was left in where the outlet put it, so readers can follow it. Many thought that Guv contest important. 

Go Nina. Win the full term. Make Congress better, along with others, rather than installing full term more suffering among the people via one more of the same old painful tone-deaf inner-party Dem stasis lovers.

[this post has been edited for final posting to assure clarity of outlook and beliefs]

UPDATE: a video

FURTHER: In some detail, for clarity, a judgment - Nina Turner's appeal to Crabgrass is less about what she says and how she says it, as it is about her early Bernie backing, her supporting Medicare for All, and her being one you can fully trust to mean what she says. No lies. No vagaries. What she says is said blunty and to the point, without straddle, prattle or empty platitude. Turner has her heart and her mind in synch in the right places. She is articulately aware of the need for U.S. government to change and treat its population with more conscience and wisdom than seen in the seventy-seven year Crabgrass author's lifespan. She fights. There is no quit to her. Finally, beyond doubt Nina Turner truly wants our government to be civilized and decent, despite great fortunes allied against anything approaching that goal. Add to that her abiding distrust of Joe Biden, which is yet another endearing charm.

Minneapolis held an election yesterday.

One link. Readers can doubtlessly find others.

DWT - the gift that keeps giving. Progressive in heart and mind. Ohio mediocrity in the crosshairs.

• Link.
  

Ohio Voters Have A Big, Big Decision To Make-- And The Consequences Are National

Ohio Senator Rob Portman (R) hasn't gone the fascist route the way so many of his colleagues have, either because it fits them ideologically or because they're petrified to cross Trump. Nor has Portman stood up to Trump or to his party's fascist drift. Instead he's been, basically, a mediocrity with the aspirations of being another Susan Collins. When he decided to retire after the current session, Ohio was given a real opportunity for an upgrade. And that upgrade-- Morgan Harper, a woman who flies in the face of mediocrity and horrifies the lesser-of-two-evils strategy the DSCC and Ohio Democratic Party use in their races-- is in an uphill battle for the Democratic nomination by the guaranteed loser Schumer has recruited, Tim Ryan, a wishy-washy nothing who is very much like Portman. He's another dull careerist with nothing to offer Ohioans except that he's on Team Blue, not Team Red-- and at a time when most Ohioans, all things equal, seem to prefer Team Red. Harper, on the other hand, is an intrepid fighter for Justice with a strong appeal not related to the two corrupted, compromised corporate political parties.

Harper disregards the DSCC diktat to never let anyone know what you stand for unless there's plenty of ambiguity and wiggle-room. Her campaign site's issues page lets Ohio voters know exactly what she intends to do in Congress-- like, for example:

• Universal healthcare

• Universal childcare

• Universal education

• Racial justice

• Environmental justice

• Reproductive rights

• Workers rights

Compared what Morgan's website says about healthcare with what Ryan's website says.

Morgan Harper's website: "Healthcare is a human right. But our system is failing Ohioans, 1 million of whom lost their healthcare during the pandemic. Giving power back to our communities means that no one dies or goes bankrupt because of medical treatment, and everyone can afford their prescription drugs. The best way to achieve universal healthcare is by extending Medicare, a proven program, to every citizen.

Tim Ryan's website: "Congressman Ryan believes that affordable and accessible health care is a basic right for all Americans, and that health insurance is an investment not only in quality of life for our citizens, but also in our economy."

His platitudes about accessible health care are straight from the GOP playbook and any Republican could say the exact same thing without blinking. Her prescription is Medicare-for-All-- simple and clean and not about the insurance companies Ryan and the Democratic status quo Establishment are still very much stuck on-- just like the Republican status quo Establishment.

What the Democrats are counting on to pull Ryan over the finishing line-- the only thing they ever count on for their mediocre candidates-- is a blue wave. 2022 will not be a blue wave election. Democrats will be lucky if there's not a red wave... very lucky. Democratic candidates can win in a hostile environment-- but not by being bland and safe and hoping no one notices they're taking Republican-lite positions.

 [...]

Amy Klobuchar's abiding abhorrence of anything smacking at all of controversy galls. Big time. Bernie tries to push the envelope. Amy? She is the envelope.

 

Political correctness redux.

WCCO reports what can be viewed as over-reaction, today. (The Verboten word going unspoken in reporting.) Readers can decide whether it is a step too far to not write the wording which caused the fan to load up.

 Reagan campaign advisor, Lee Atwater, 1981. 

Atwater's statement made waves then. Has the pendulum swung too far? I was a ten year old in New Orleans when the Brown school desegregation decision was reached. Attending Lee School, a segregated grade school then named after Robert E. Lee, (since renamed years ago). I recall even at that age finding it curious to have students assembled each morning to recite the Pledge in a room with the flag in a corner, a large portrait of Lee on a facing wall. Times truly are different.

Breakthrough in cancer early diagnosis via a blood test. Not for every kind of malignancy, but covering fifty neoplasm types.

WCCO report. Not an easy test. Not inexpensive, costing a bit under a grand. Patients pay, for now. It is not yet a generally covered medical expense.

WCCO reports a Covid-19 Minnesota reinfection rate of just under 10% of those in Minnesota infected since the pandemic began, while slightly over 10% of those infected in Minnesota died.

Actual numbers for those statistics and more; this link.

DEAD RECKONING: The future of Northstar Commuter Rail. Before ceasing it to staunch the blood loss, the Met Council lovers will look to Rebrand It. "Big Dipper," or something like that. [UPDATED]

Strib local content, the brain fart that went too far. But then did not in implementation go far enough. The idea coalesced into life coupled to Ramsey Town Center - build that, or start it - and then, Nirvana with commuter rail around the corner. Dumb and Dumber was the name of a movie. I think it was about those in and allied to Met Council with planning degrees, and about hubris. Perhaps I am wrong. I did not view the Jim Carey movie. I viewed dumb and dumber as filmed in Ramsey, Anoka County, MN.

The groundbreaking movie I saw. The sequel. What cannot be seen in the sequel? 

People.

Still so. Yet, before folding the hand, rebrand. Just as "Ramsey Town Center" was rebranded to, "The COR." 

Give me that old-time rebranding that we all know so well.

_____________UPDATE___________

 Don't you love history, for what it teaches? Crabgrass readers, in retrospect, should boost the viewing numbers for those two YouTube "movies." In hindsight, they amuse, if it were not for the taxpayer money wasted.

A Strib report of a 2010 prequel meeting to the groundbreaking,  (and to the sequel). That 2010 Strib item, in closing, states -

Meanwhile, officials from Ramsey wonder what it will take to get the $15 million needed to open a station in their city. "We thought it was a foregone conclusion that they [the Rail Authority] knew we were looking for money," Mayor Bob Ramsey said Wednesday.

"What do we need to do to get the county's attention?"

Erhart, one of Northstar's founding fathers, said he'd love to see stations both in Ramsey and at Foley Boulevard. County Board Chairman Dennis Berg has been vocal in his support of Ramsey at board meetings, as have other commissioners.

But Ramsey was not on the Rail Authority's agenda when it voted last week, West said.

The city continues to seek county, state and federal funding for a proposed station that could give an economic jolt to the half-vacant Ramsey Town Center project, where trains would stop.

[italics added]. Can you say, "a rathole?" As in, "Money pissed down a rathole." 

Met Council and affiliated planners, per a 2007 Met Council planning and funding meeting document. Warren Buffet's Berkshire firm and others involved in BNSF stock holdings, they can just smile and smile. They own the tracks. They licensed Northstar use of their rail tracks, for millions and millions. (Dollars, not passengers.) People who know have told me that for any project, a continuing or terminating decision rests not on sunk cost, but on future viability, including return on investment. Inadequate return, inadequate future, then pull the plug to cut losses.

A 2013 post-completion "postmortem" tells of low ridership from the start, and it has been bad that way ever since. At page 4 of 7 pages, the report begins a discussion of capital costs. 

Gee. Lots of money. 

Don't you love planner hubris, and what it teaches?

FURTHER: There is a Ramsey Station opening ribbon-cutting YouTube "movie" online. Same politicians. 

FURTHER: Success has many parents. Failure is an orphan. Likely the politicians do not remember the things they said, back then - on film - earlier in our 21st Century. Likely they'd not champion the thing the same way, as back then, when it was a project being sold the public. The Ramsey Station was built with union labor, prevailing wage, so union support peaked then. They were onboard at the start, so to speak. Now the union officials might ask, "What station are you talking about?"

_________FURTHER UPDATE________

POLITICIANS: Sometimes expanding a post adds essential background and linking, other times it makes the post too long for too many readers. If reading this far, politicians said and did things, with a perspective they should not, ever, be allowed to forget or brush under the rug.  WCCO online, Nov. 13, 2013:

Starting Nov. 14, they’ll [Ramsey residents] be riding the rails daily, as the long awaited Northstar commuter rail begins service.

[...] It’s the first “planned transit development” along Northstar’s 40-mile route between downtown Minneapolis and Big Lake.

“We’re not building it for one day and shutting it down,” said Anoka County Commissioner Matt Look, “we’re building it for the next 50 to 100 years.”

As chairman of Anoka County’s Regional Railroad Authority, commissioner Look defends the station’s cost. It was originally budgeted for $13 million to construct, but came in under budget at around $11 million.

He firmly believes the new stop will feed new riders into the system, eventually boosting daily ridership by upwards of 25 percent.

A big reason behind the optimism is the station’s surrounding commerce. Ramsey’s COR development includes a giant 800-stall covered parking ramp, 350 stalls of which are dedicated to rail commuters. There is also a 230-unit apartment complex now under construction and planned to open in the spring of 2013.

“If we can increase riders, we lower operating costs and that should be a goal all of us have along the line,” Look said. “It’s a goal we certainly have here in Anoka County.”

Still, overall ridership isn’t growing as planned. Metro Transit needs ridership to reach 4,500 commuters per day before it can apply for the federal funds to help pay for an expansion of service to St. Cloud.

Northstar proponents hope the Ramsey stop will help reach that goal, by attracting a “Chicago-like” lifestyle that is built along the rails.

[italics added] Let's see. 2013 - fifty or a hundred years would be 2065 to 2113. We are short of that today. Matt these days, on Northstar's future, is not quoted in media.

Either he was blowing smoke back in 2013, still believes what he said but demurs, or is hiding from having changed his mind. That largely exhausts possibilities.

Look is obligated to speak up. To defend eleven million spent dollars, beyond having then said it came in two million under forecast. He still holds the same Anoka Board District 1 seat he held back then. Regularly salaried then to now.

Silence is not always golden.

If indeed, he still believes in the long-term perspective, stand up and say so, or am I expecting too much from a cautious man? On that time frame, he might be right, and if he still thinks so, that such speculative government spending remains justified, he should defend his statements, showing consistency.

'Splaining is due. If Matt Look has changed his mind, we all grow as we age and learn, and he should own up to over exuberance in his past public service. Silence, however, would be a disservice to the voters he represents. At least articulating a current position on something he was greatly instrumental in seeing from plan to actuality, is a minimal expectation. He need not convince, but he needs to speak, even if not wanting to.. 

Matt Look owes voters an explanation of some fashion. We await.

________FURTHER UPDATE________

Jim Abeler, Anoka's career politician over decades has no right to remain silent either. His constituents deserve his voicing his current thinking about Northstar.

Recall: Natalie Steffen while on Met Council was a major driving force for Northstar and for additional spending to have a Ramsey Station; but Steffen has left public life after seeking the Anoka County District 1 seat where Matt Look won that election. Abeler not only put his cred on the line for Natalie, he posed on her behalf putting his cred on the line for Northstar. 

On Steffen's 2010 county board campaign site, this image, do check it out, accompanied by this text:

State Rep. Jim Abeler and Natalie review plans for a Northstar Commuter Rail  station in Ramsey.  This proposed station would connect northwest Anoka County to a downtown Minneapolis hub for present and future rail and bus connections. 

Natalie was instrumental in obtaining nearly $4 million in Met Council grants that made the Ramsey Municipal Parking ramp (in back-ground) and amphitheatre possible.  Natalie’s efforts to adopt a Met Council funding formula helped make it possible for of Anoka to get $1.5 million for downtown development.

Natalie: “It’s called returning tax dollars to the community and fostering economic betterment.”

[italics in original] Abeler touted and posed, plans held one side by Steffen, the other side by Abeler, together standing trackside on BNSF right-of-way; so what's his posture now? Keep Northstar on long-term speculation, or terminate the hemorrhaging by ending it years after great expenditure, in effect, admitting it is a failed venture which deserves no more life. 

Abeler had his hand in things, and should now articulalte his present understandings. Hiding has no place for careerist politicians. Local power should not go silent when a key question arises where local power had a hand on the plans along with the key driving force toward making Northstar a done deal.

Of note as a possible admission of a learning curve somewhat upward and not flatlined, after Northstar's build-out and history from then to now, Met Council has NOT pushed any other commuter rail on routes it does not own. Including the question of Northstar being extended to St. Cloud; which is politics beyond Met Council's jurisdictional reach. Also worth noting before closing this post, building the thing to Big Lake and ending it there went beyond Met Council jurisdiction into Sherburne County; into Mary Kiffmeyer jurisdiction, and Mary should also be held to task for getting the servicing and maintenance site in her legislative district as part of the distribution of pork.

Hence, Mary Kiffmeyer should speak now, her hand was into things, or at least it surely appears so. Extending to Big Lake and no further, she can commute by rail to her home away from home, the Legislature in St. Paul, for as long as she and Northstar remain in play. 

BOTTOM LINE - JUST SAY NO - to glide-and-slide silence now from politicians after the event was pushed to a current status without success to show from build-out to the present. 

One fact, Look's fifty or a hundred years outlook will be untested if Northstar is terminated now. Look would tell you that.

FURTHER: One last link, Strib, here, from this past March, again about a question of whether to shut the service down, or wait to see more, post-pandemic. A paragraph:

While the Metropolitan Council, which oversees public transportation in the Twin Cities, has engaged in recent discussions with Hennepin, Anoka and Sherburne counties about the fate of Northstar, no decisions have been made. But the council has said all options are on the table.

Further excerpt:

Shutting down a commuter rail line is a complicated and expensive proposition, but not unheard of.

In Northstar's case, it would require the state to pay $85 million to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a partial reimbursement of federal funds used to build the line. Koznick has suggested that Minnesota's congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., should ask for a "waiver" from the hefty fee.

Some transit lines have been decommissioned nationwide, including the Loop Trolley in St. Louis and the OnTrack suburban rail line in Syracuse, N.Y., both due to flagging ridership.

But talk of shutting down Northstar is "premature and ill-conceived," said Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, who chairs the House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee. He characterized the diversion of Northstar money to businesses in need as "cynical politics."

Hornstein believes public transit "will recover, but it will be slow."

The real issue with Northstar, he added, was the "poor planning" that resulted in the line ending in Big Lake, a rural outpost in Sherburne County, as opposed to the more populous St. Cloud.

 All for now.