Jack Nelson Pallmeyer - a letter to the editor.

Jack's family, Hannah, Naomi, Jack, Sara, and Audrey Nelson-Pallmeyer, from "about Jack," on the campaign website.

Blue Man in A Red District republishes the short May 25, Strib leading letter of the day, from Barbara Calrson of Shrewood, saying mainly:

Over the past few days, I have read with interest all the hype and hand-wringing over the U.S. Senate race. In all of this, I have failed to see the name of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer mentioned.

We do not have to look to a humorist or to someone proven to back his party no matter what, in order to have a viable alternative candidate for the U.S. Senate.I urge you to go to Jack's website, jackforsenate.org, and see for yourself.

You should do that, visit the website, but first read this, one of the earlier pieces of campaign literature the household received from Jack prior to precinct caucus, showing much of what he offers as a candidate that is appealing [click to enlarge the image]:




Legitimately using Wellstone green, Jack expresses vision more than ten years out, talking about the global view and not what's he done in the past for Blaine or such. Hopes. Expressing a sense of justice and goals - where if you quit on that out of cynicism or belief in starting small, or myopia over only immediate goals, then you've given away the store before you start and try, never mind keeping after it.

Please look at Jack's website. And that of Franken. He also is good.

AP - One of the bleakest views of how bad the housing market slump is and may be.

Locally, last week's Friday, May 23, 2008, print version of the Anoka County Union, in its legal notices, all 32 pages of its Section D were mortgage foreclosure sale notices. Then, 18 out of the 22 pages of Section E were the same for a total of forty pages of foreclosure notices [and I noted there were two postponement of sale notices in that batch]. At roughly 8 - 9 notices per page, at 40 pages, that is 320 - 360 for the most current full single week. I believe there is a multi-week publishing requirement for foreclosures, but for a snapshot in time, that many notices far exceeds prior norms.

For a local and anectodotal comparison, an arguable baseline or trend - Anoka County Union past legal notices section -- Oct. 18, 2002, 8-1/2 pages; Feb. 27, 2004, 13 pages; March 26, 2004, 13 pages; Apr. 2, 2004, 11 pages; Nov. 5, 2004, eleven pages; Nov. 12, 2004, 9-1/2 pages; Feb. 11, 2005, 9-1/2pages; March 11, 2005, 10-1/2 pages; June 16, 2006, 17 pages; and earlier this month, May 9, 2008, 36 pages.

While it's the evidence gleaned from papers still around the house, and not a random sample, it still is an indicator to compare with what's to be seen years later, a baseline of 8-13 pages through early 2005, a slight jump in summer 2006, perhaps, but with only a single sample, and then wonked out through the roof to 36-40 pages before the end of this month.

Record Anoka County mortgage foreclosure activity was noted in the blogs, after being reported in the print news, with the Strib having an online March 2, 2008, article on Anoka County foreclosures at a then record level, per 2007 statistics. See also, here and here; and we have all read the stories about one place or another, so that is enough background.

Clearly those predicting last summer that the trend had peaked and this year would start a rebound have yet to be proven correct.

It currently appears that things are quite high now and still trending upward, from the informal ACU legal notices indicator.

Nationwide there is this, an AP feed, online here, saying, with little excerpted out:

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER - AP ECONOMICS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Like spring flowers, the "For Sale" signs are sprouting in front yards all over the country. But anxious sellers are facing the most brutal environment in decades, with a slumping economy, falling home prices and rising mortgage foreclosures.

And even the faint promise of better days ahead might not come true, given all the headwinds the housing industry is facing at the moment.

"This is going to be another difficult spring," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "I think we are at the beginning of the end of the housing downturn, but it is going to be a long and painful end."

The devastation is certainly a far cry from the boom years from 2001 to 2005 when sales of new and existing homes were setting records for five straight years. During that time, home prices were soaring, luring thousands of investors into the market, hoping to buy homes and flip them for quick profit.

But since 2006, the country has been mired in a housing bust which, in many ways, is the worst since World War II.

Construction is expected to drop to the slowest pace since the 1940s and prices are expected to decline by the largest amount since the Great Depression.

Hardest hit are the states where sales boomed the most: California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and parts of the Northeast. In the Midwest, the problem is shrinking jobs in the auto industry, making homes hard to sell. But virtually all of the country has felt the aftershocks of the housing slump, either through weaker home sales or the massive drag housing has imposed on the overall economy.

Housing has shaved more than a full percentage point off economic growth, trimming the gross domestic product for the past two quarters to a barely discernible 0.6 percent rate and raising the threat that the country could topple into a full-blown recession.

The National Association of Realtors reported that 46 states saw sales decline in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2007. Two-thirds of 149 metropolitan areas saw prices decline during the same period, the largest percentage of cities reporting price drops in the history of the NAR survey, which goes back to 1979.

The state with the biggest sales decline was Maryland, with sales down 38.6 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2007. The drop nationwide was 22.2 percent.

The price decline nationally was 7.7 percent in the first quarter, with the biggest plunge a 29.2 percent decline in the Sacramento, Calif., area.

As the spring sales season got under way, the slump was continuing. The Realtors reported Friday that existing home sales fell 1 percent in April, the eighth drop in the past nine months, with the median home price falling 8 percent compared with a year ago, the second-biggest drop on record.

So just how much worse will things get?

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors, sees some hopeful signs. "Lower prices and low interest rates are starting to generate results," Yun said, noting that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.92 percent in April, down from 6.18 percent in April 2007. That reflected an aggressive rate-cutting effort by the Federal Reserve to try to keep the country out of a recession.

Sales should also be helped in coming months, Yun predicted, by the reappearance of more mortgage products as lenders reopen the tap for certain loans. That supply had been closed following the credit crisis that hit last August, triggered by rising defaults in subprime mortgages.

Other economists are not so optimistic, noting that the Realtors' latest report showed the number of unsold single-family homes jumping to a 23-year high, reflecting, in part, a rising tide of mortgage foreclosures, which are dumping more homes on an already glutted market.

Adding to the foreclosure problem is the weak economy, which has resulted in four straight months of job layoffs, an indication to some analysts that the country has already fallen into a recession.

Rising job layoffs and higher gasoline and food prices have sent consumer confidence plunging - not a great environment to mount a rebound in housing.

And then there is the problem of the huge overhang of unsold homes generating further declines in prices, which seem to be keeping more prospective buyers on the fence.

"Right now a lot of people are staying away because they don't want to buy an asset that might lose value right away," said Patrick Newport, an economist at Global Insight.

Newport predicted that prices, which by some measures have fallen by about 15 percent nationwide from their peak two years ago, will decline another 10 percent before bottoming out in the spring of 2009. A 25 percent fall in prices would be the biggest since home prices plunged by about one-third during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

David Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, said he believed sales will bottom out by the middle of this year and then start to move higher by the end of this year.

He said builders, trying to control inventories, will continue slashing production, with housing starts expected to drop by 39 percent this year following a 30 percent decline in 2007. That will push activity to the slowest annual pace since the end of World War II. Seiders predicted a gradual rebound in construction starting next year.

"This is stacking up as the most dramatic housing contraction in the post-World War II period," he said.

And while sales, construction and prices should all start to recover by next year, the rebound is not expected to be a rapid one. Some analysts are forecasting it will take a couple of years for housing to regain its footing.

"It is going to take some time first to restore confidence that housing is a reasonably OK investment, then to work off this inventory and then for the financial system to revive," Zandi predicted.

So, it is unlikely the GOP can engineer any October Surprise this time, in housing.

Michele Bachmann has been on the House Financial Services Committee which has made some sensible proposals, probably falling short of a real and complete answer, but it is unclear where Bachmann stands on the plight of families losing their homes vs. her key concern for ultra-high income tax payers not being taxed more. I have not seen any indication she is in line with majority proposals from that committee.

In fairness to Bachmann, I have not seen any politicians running for federal office committing to any detailed proposal as a solution to the foreclosure crisis, nor have I seen any go as far as I would that being born into citizenship in the wealthiest nation on earth is an entitlement as a right and not a privilege to freedom from hunger, from homelessness, and from denial of medical care.

Jack Nelson Pallmeyer comes closest to that perspective which is one reason I favor him; his heart is in it; and Bob Olson while a candidate had a proposal that if we became serious about alternate energy and ceased transferring so much wealth from the nation to buy foreign oil, we could create more energy sector jobs and have that cash flow to spend for relief of domestic suffering. That and ceasing a deficit funded war, another thing he suggested, would help.

Olson lost the endorsement and Jack still has a chance but appears trailing too far in delegate count. The two making the most sense and being truest to core progressive values long given lip service in their party seem distrusted too much, in their own party. In the ultra-conservative and fence-straddling middle segments of their own party.

That is very sad. I hope Jack somehow gains the endorsement. He is closest to Wellstone and others who kept the faith.

RAMSEY - They put Environmental Policy Board agenda and minutes online. There's nothing comparable for the Finance Committee. Legacy intent?

Either it is stupid to continue to not have minutes for critical Finance Committee activity online, or continuing legacy intent, from days of James Norman.

However, in trying to unravel the exact initial contact point on record between Tinklenberg Group and City of Ramsey, I met a stone wall at December 2002.

Online records do reference that there were contacts or at least one contact made before James Norman and Elwyn Tinklenberg were exchanging correspondence that was put on record, (although with a reference to "enclosures" from Tinklenberg that never made it into the full agenda for the council).

[As always, click on the image to enlarge to readable size, or open it in another window]




These images present Council minutes and full agenda evidence of at least one mid-December face-to-face visit between Elwyn Tinklenberg and James Norman. Those resource items reference a crucial Jan 14, 2003 finance committee session involving the Tinklenberg for-fee proposals, with no paper trail of what transpired before the matter days later going to Council. Perhaps, just perhaps, the enclosures not in the full agenda were on the table before Finance Committee, and if their agenda and minutes were published online we'd see the full package. Perhaps not. But without it online, it is like the infamous 18-minute gap in the Nixon Tapes. A black hole.

That was back when David Elvig headed that committee, (if I recall correctly). Perhaps in a blog comment David might share his recollections of all he knows about the initial Tinklenberg insinuation of himself into Ramsey affairs, for a fee, with Tinklenberg Group thereafter ultimately taking payments from Ramsey totalling $840,000, according to City spreadsheet records I have seen.

Some schmoozing, or fair arms length contact, who's to say which without a paper trail, happened leading up to the Tinklenberg Group's first appearance in minutes (that I could find), Dec. 2002 - Jan. 2003.

Not putting Finance Committee agendas and minutes online -- It is like the refusal to televise council work sessions.

Indefensible.

Do they not keep minutes of such an important deliberative activity? Is it a feeling that while minutes and agendas do exist, they are not worth posting? Or worse, is there no maintained paper trail at all?

Either way, not putting Finance Committee matters online in full disclosure form, minutes and full agenda, is shameful and should change.

After all - the money and situations concerning the money - what is more important to citizens to know and weigh?

Setbacks from wetlands? Sure that is important.

But get real.

I shall publish favorably the names of any council candidates filing this July and running for election, who will publicly commit and inform me of the committment to have work sessions televised again, and minutes taken and posted electronically for the Finance Committee.

Indeed, why not televise finance committee and public works committee? Parks gets televised. Finance and public works does not. That's strange.

For now, on the "Documents" laser fiche page, all I could find are four "outcome" categories; nothing deliberative - no hint of decision processes before finance matters are presented council.

Transparency is good, sunshine is the best disinfectant. Justice Brandeis pointed all that out as far back as 1914, regarding dealings in "Other People's Money."

__________UPDATE_________
SOMETHING certainly happened at that 18-minute gap meeting of the Finance Committee. While there is no paper trail record of it online except the following reference back to a decision having been made then, off camera, for later on camera pro-forma approval and the Tinklenberg letter agreement even referencing that the day after the stealth meeting, James Norman and Elwyn Tinklenberg negotiated a deal where conveniently enough for the both of them, James Norman would be Elwyn Tinklenberg's official contact person in dealings - and I have presented in earlier posts evidence that after Norman's precipitously abrupt ouster/leaving Ramsey, he was a Tinklenberg Group affiliate - he had his revolving door, in the lobby, much like Elwyn's.





________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Interestingly, that initial Tinklenberg-to-Norman Happy New Year letter embodied the "federal dollars" or "federal funds" theme that much on the Internet indicates as a repeatedly used theme of Elwyn Tinklenberg in soliciting or finalizing cash-flow business for his Tinklenberg Group:

Also, I would like to discuss with you the idea of using federal dollars to advance the official mapping of the TH 10 corridor. I think the potential exists and it may serve the City's interests well.

The man apparently does have that as a sales-pitch approach he likes and relies on time and again.

***
For something completely unrelated and wholly different, this photograph:

A big to-do list, the Gray Plant Mooty falling bridge report, tails of tailings, etc. THE BRIDGE.

Finance and Commerce reports the Gray Plant Mooty report on paper weighs 30 pounds. Not as much as the I35W bridge weighed, but hefty. Heavy reading.

On Wednesday, Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, sets before Rep. Bernie Lieder, DFL-Crookston, the voluminous report on the 35W collapse compiled by the law firm of Gray Plant Mooty. (Photo by Bill Klotz)

Picture and caption are from the above F&C link.

Where in that stack of paper will we find the name or fingerprints of Elwyn Tinklenberg, when it talks of MnDOT look-the-other-way benign neglect?

A report of the report indicated there were seventeen years neglect of a known problem. There also were fiscal implications. Elwyn might not have wanted bridge spending to constrain him when Hiawatha was saying "Build me, and they shall ride."

The Report is online [here].

I expect the first thing I shall do is a search of each of the report subparts for "Tinklenberg" anywhere in the text.

My suspicion is the circumspect lawyers did not name names that way, but I have yet to study things.

The report may be less about finger-pointing than about moving-forward.

State Sen. Steve Murphy and Rep. Lieder issued an initial joint committee press release Dec. 19, 2007, online here, explaining initiation of the Gray Plant Mooty firm's investigative involvement, and describing the joint committee makeup and tasking. In a press release contemporaneous with the release of the May 21, 2008 report, Murphy indicates it is less about blame than ongoing procedural tightening, but politicians are political animals. "Improve communication," is a cliche, but he uses it. He indicates he needs to study reported things in more depth, so I have esteemed company, that way, while I study.

MnDOT's formal response to the report is here.

For more background about the report tasking history, see here, here, here, and here.

Any reader with additional good resource links should add info via a comment.

Certainly Elwyn Tinklenberg's spending goals when MnDOT head highwayman were not to rock any boat or precipitate discord over whether a key bridge needed to be shut down a substantial time and fixed, or redone. Infrastructure decay now is a stated motive for his becoming a reluctant candidate, he's said, but back when it mattered because he ran the shop, it must not have been his thing. He was to have his Hiawatha legacy. It needed much cash to be brought to reality, a big money sinkhole, so was the bridge back-burnered with a fig leaf study run comparable to the Larry Zanko taconite-asbestos fig-leaf thing instituted at NRRI? ("fig leaf" being a term I probably don't need to explain)

See prior Crabgrassing, two items, first this; then this, expressing second thoughts the same day, from a less judgmental perspective.

So, after reading Gray Plant Mooty & Bridge, which is longer than Brothers Karamazov, will my view of that MnDOT commissioned study become one of those instances, "I thought I was wrong but was not?"

More study of the report from back then, by those knowing more of the engineering and having the right to take depositions of persons with direct knowledge, i.e., by the lawyers representing the collapse victims advised by their consulting experts, may be needed before the question of whether Elwyn or subordinates at MnDOT ordered a valid [or a fig leaf] study as cause [or excuse] for postponing [neglecting] funding of bridge repair [shutdown and replacement] during the Tinklenberg-Ventura watch at MnDOT.

Surely, knowing James Oberstar as he does, Elwyn ought to have been able to get the funding - except which party in DC controlled the House then? That was when Mark Kennedy was my representative, I think, not as far back as Bill Luther. And if you are told before Christmas, you can have the fire-engine wagon toy, or the video game upgrade, not both, you choose - and lil' Elwyn chose the light rail instead of the more mundane girder bridge. Life is a string of choices, isn't it? Toys for Christmas, or socks and underwear. Who wants the more mundane but wiser choice?

Bottom line - can you tell from the 30 pounds Gray Plant Mooty dutifully churned - Was that one study mentioned in the earlier linked posts flawed? Was it a fig leaf to cover, "We know it's deficient, so here's a consulting contract to reach a predetermined conclusion, saying 'bad' is not 'too bad' and we can muck along just as we've been doing bridge-wise, and build that frigging light rail?

Will study of the Gray Plant Mooty study give a definitive answer? It's conjectural until the details of the many megabytes are sifted and considered.

Finally, Elwyn Tinklenberg has three studies as part of his Blue Dog, fleas, and scratching situation.

First there is the Larry Zanko study and the question of whether cancer risk is being impropitiously promoted, to be spread around as a consequence of spreading around taconite tailings as paving aggregate, a threat that nobody needs or wants in front of their homes.

Second there is this MnDOT Final Study 2001-10 of the I35W bridge status during Tinklenberg's head highwayman tenure - and was there any unwise neglect of the mundane bridge when a sexy light rail legacy to tout was an alternative way for Tink to spend? Will study of the Gray Plant Mooty study give a definitive answer to that sort of consideration?

And again, for the earlier MnDOT sponsored bridge report info, see these two U.Minn. TC campus, "Center for Transportation Studies" links to full pdf materials; here, and here. And for a lets-give-the-benefit-of-doubt expression, until more evidence is available and perhaps determinative, see my thinking, here.

It's only a conjecture until the details of the many megabytes are sifted and considered. It may still be a conjecture after the effort, but the sifting has to come first.

Third there is the MnDOT Highway 10 high-priority highway upgrade study that was propitiously wrapped up May 2002, before Tinklenberg left MnDOT Oct. 2002, and formed the Tinklenberg Group in Nov. 2002, got his head together with James Norman at City of Ramsey in mid-December 2002, and had his first Highway 10 related contract as best as I could discover what was "first," Jan. 2003, surprisingly with City of Ramsey, contact person, surprisingly, James Norman.

He could write a book, "How to Become a Millionaire - Through the Revolving Door and Prospering From a Study."

Perhaps he could get Rupert Murdoch to pay him a cash advance, to do it.

With three extended studies to study, [1] Gray Plant Mooty, [2] Zanko and others on taconite fibers and cancer, and [3] Highway 10 saga pages; pinning the tail on the donkey might require a substantial investment of time.

I expect the GOP may have more time and motive to invest it in study than I, (they certainly have more at stake, Bachmann's seat, while I am solely a private citizen with concerns). Also, there are things I enjoy more than thinking about Tinklenberg out of whatever time the reaper may leave me.

However, I wonder if the GOP and Bachmann people are up to the task of real and substantial research effort and thought, vs. Brodkorbian style mud-slinging.

We shall see.

They said it. A study of Ramsey Town Center's promised foreseeability.

This from the City of Ramsey's website, published there in 2002 although undated, looking to the future of Town Center:

As a growing community, we need to be thoughtful about our growth to maximize the benefits while minimizing any negative impacts. We know that we cannot stop development from coming to our town. Therefore, we must take the initiative to prudently plan and steer the development into something that we want rather than something that we're just stuck with.

[...] I am delighted to be part of our community's long term health and I would encourage others to take the time to become involved with the "smart" growth of our community. Ramsey truly has some outstanding opportunities that we need to be in front of and to help mentor.

Yeah. Right. "... rather than something that we're just stuck with." Uh-huh.

"... part of our community's long term health ...".

Uh-huh.

"Opportunities we need to be in front of." Like that commuter train. In front of it we are so lucky, it stops, everytime it passes Ramsey, so we can move from being in front of it. Makes sense to do that, doesn't it?

"We know that we cannot stop development from coming ...". Right? All over the place they are building like crazy in that weed patch that used to be only a held-for-speculation green acre cornfield?

Not exactly. "Progress" takes time.

Even though a tax-base bonanza and uninterrupted "progress" clearly was a foreseeable mechanistic thing, baking a cake.

There's more.

The Town Center planning ---

Mission

The Ramsey Town Center Task Force is created to facilitate and encourage a Transit-Orientated Development in the City of Ramsey that will fully utilize multi-modal transportation options, including the Northstar Commuter Rail, and that will provide the residents of Ramsey and the region access to desirable businesses, services, housing opportunities, natural resources and most importantly, a centralized area easily identifiable as the community of Ramsey.

[...]

Contact Information

City of Ramsey
Patrick Trudgeon
Principal Planner

They said ALL that "fully utilize multi-modal transportation options, including the Northstar Commuter Rail" stuff, from well before Bruce Nedegaard paid out any borrowed dollars for Kurak and other land. It was all this neat and tidy before-and-after presentation we received, while being told of how the tax base increase would be a relief to us all:

Before-



After-


Remember? It's there now on the ground, just as in the pictures, now that it's 2008 and years have passed.

Yeah. Right. There on the ground just as the artist rendered it. Warm. Fuzzy. Walkable. Transit oriented hub and all. All the stuff, and better than the drawing.

A 2002 Met Council posting, (since scrubbed by Met Council from its website - hello, are you there, Natalie - why's it gone Natalie),

Even greater change may come from the planned Northstar commuter rail, the first of its kind planned for the Twin Cities region. Recognizing the increasing growth pressure, the city and the Metropolitan Council have joined hands on a novel development opportunity for a 275-acre vacant greenfield site with a southwest edge along Hwy. 10 and the proposed commuter rail.

Ramsey is designated as a future station site. In spring 2003, Mn/DOT will open a transit park-and-ride stop in Ramsey on a line from Elk River to Minneapolis.

In contrast to the highway-oriented jobs and retail progressing up Hwy. 10, Ramsey's proposed town center would fill a void where no strong local community gathering place exists today. [...]

Phew!

"Ramsey is designated as a future station site." It said that. Back in 2002, before outsider Bruce Nedegaard bought into it, Nedegaard not being an old-time long-time Ramsey good-ol'-resident, not in that circle. He bought. Station got pulled. Presently Elwyn Tinklenberg's getting thousands for his group to accompany Elvig and Gamec to DC mid-April of this year, the very same day as the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board determines and posts that Tinklenberg is not a lobbyist. And why were they in DC? To get that "designated as a future station site" thing finalized, now six years later, or to make that attempt, with Nedegaard first going broke and then going dead, and with weed field replacing cornfield.

Elvig after chairing the task force was then, back in 2002 when Met Council posted that stuff, running for the first time for a city council seat, and we were being told of that lock-in to a Northstar station stop. Slam dunk. Done deal.

Uh-huh.

Some think leadership and sound decision making is a rare talent. Practiced with directness and without deception.

Others see things as easy as baking a cake. Or say so.

The Kuraks made fourteen million in the process.

I expect neither Tom or Pattiann would view it as a flawed process.

Nor would Elwyn Tinklenberg, or if he would it surely would surprise me. Not that he's ever voiced an opinion, flawed or not. He's cashed every check Ramsey issued Tinklenberg Group. He is agreeable to moving the process along.

So you tell me. Was Nedegaard hung out to dry? Led to believe the transit hub hype? Then with the rug pulled out, bled slowly?

More Burmese junta lobbyist ties, this time Michele Bachmann.

Normally I do not post job openings. And no, with the picture of Michele Bachmann, it is not about yet another Bachmann DC staff vacancy. I would neither lead nor lure anyone into that realm of disaster, I have standards, and do not hype accepting wooden nickles.

However, for a bright and enterprising GOP functionary out of work, I am aware that there is a major high-visability resume-building opportunity of a kind that seldom arises, a once in a lifetime opening, see here, and here.

It is a local job, some traveling probably involved, time away from family, short-term, not permanant. I am presuming it is still open. I would give the job to Mark Kennedy, a man courteous enough to have given his seat to a lady, and when last heard from a man proud of and touting how he could do consensus work even across an aisle.

Mark Kennedy should run Pawlenty's - er, McCain's convention.

But I digress. They could perhaps find some Burmese general to run things - with an iron hand. Bachmann and Coleman should have no problem with that.

The picture is from a Minn. Monitor, May 13, 2008, online supplemental item by Paul Demko:

Norm Coleman is not the only member of the Minnesota Congressional delegation to receive money associated with lobbying firm DCI Group. Freshman Rep. Michelle Bachmann received a $500 contribution from DCI Group partner Brian McCabe in 2006, according to Federal Election Commission Records. McCabe is also president of Progress for America, a conservative 527 group that spent roughly $45 million on advertising during the 2004 presidential campaign.

DCI Group has been under fire for its work lobbying on behalf of the despotic military junta in Myanmar. The man that John McCain tapped to run the Republican National Convention, Doug Goodyear, stepped down from the post after his DCI ties surfaced in Newsweek over the weekend. Doug Davenport, who was charged with heading up the McCain campaign in the mid-Atlantic states, also resigned owing to his work for the lobbying firm.

As first reported on Minnesota Monitor, Sen. Norm Coleman has received nearly $10,000 in campaign contributions from individuals and a political action committee affiliated with DCI. The DFL has called on Coleman to give the money to charity, but the senator has so far refused.

No other members of the Minnesota delegation [not even Kline?] have received DCI-related donations during the last three election cycles, according to FEC records.

Frist, credit is due Minn. Monitor for breaking the entire story, naming the various names and amounts shunted into the Coleman campaign treasury, and then supplementing it with news of the war chest building involvement of my district's representative in Congress, the one and only Ms. Michele Bachmann. (They can even be forgiven for spelling her first name the normal way instead of the Bachmann way, when they bring that kind of news.)


BUT THINK ABOUT IT --- If Bob Olson had gotten the DFL Sixth District endorsement, how he could make something of this situation.

Elwyn Tinklenberg is in no position to be throwing such stones.

If not in a glass house Elwyn himself has been several times through the glass revolving door, in the lobby.

It is similar to the situation where Peyton Manning can make the throws Ryan Leaf couldn't.

_____UPDATE______
The Coleman shoe dropping, days before the same with Bachmann, was something I learned of and posted yesterday, this link. I just added a footnote thought there - this thought - with reporting being of Franken and Coleman and their supporters moaning back and forth about the other's activities and ties - all of that leaves out the squeaky clean, intelligent, and progressive third Senate hopeful, Jack Nelson Pallmeyer, my first choice, over Franken [but with Franken being miles ahead of Norm Coleman so that whichever of the two, Nelson Pallmeyer or Franken gets the DFL nod, I would be supportive]. I like Jack better and believe he'd shake things up in DC more along the Wellstone lines than Franken, and bless him for that and for his cognizant and humane foreign relations views, but either DFL man is a good man who I would have no hesitation supporting.

They get the progressive one, we get the one with fleas.

Ah, the lucky folks living in the third district.



Aswin Madia, by popular voting, has been elected the Newest Progressive Patriot. Please visit the site and see more about Ashwin Madia's honor. He deserves the honor. If only he were the DFL endorsed candidate in the sixth district. We'd have something good, if that were to be.



Instead we get a blue dog, replete with fleas.





A blue dog replete with fleas - which is the excess baggage a dog carries - but with a bunch of billboards saying he's optimistic.

He paid for the billboards, so he can make them say that. Yet no matter how optimistic he is the fleas will not go away. ET will be scratching through November. Jim Oberstar and others might try a flea bath, but washing out taconite tailings and all would take a humongous effort. Even with the Eighth safe and locked in, Jim still has his own fish to fry, his own load to carry, his own billboards to erect.