PBS, last night, Lyndon Johnson's presidency - "winning" in Vietnam and the McCain answer to the Bush war legacy.

In the debates, McCain kept saying Iraq is "winnable" despite all indications that is false. It struck me that in response Obama never disputed the remark. He simply let it stand, as the McCain position - stay until we win.

The PBS item on Johnson, when I tuned in, was talking first of Great Society, civil rights and voting rights. Then it moved to escalation of the war. It moved to dissent over the war and the lack of quick and real civil rights action, the riots and burning and soldiers in the streets of our cities. It moved to an entrenched will to win in Vietnam. To the truth that Ho Chi Mihn realized at some point the Americans would leave. And then, if not sooner, he would win. Johnson failed, Vietnam won. The long and extremely costly and corrosive occupation ended - as it did, where it could have ended differently but it was inevitable that Johnson knew and Ho knew the occupation would end. The indigenous forces would win. Civil war would work itself out on its own terms after the occupation ended. That was the lesson of Vietnam.

All of that is the extreme burden of persuasion that McCain and his position bear, the burden of history, the burden of reality.

To tell people we will win Iraq, and have the situation as it is, is too much a stretch. Particularly so for those who lived through the Vietnam years. The full cost of that to our society and how it might have grown to have us a better nation is felt by many and fully grasped in all aspects by no one.

And the Bush-neocon fools went in. McCain, saying he is not George W. Bush, says stay and win. Too many of us have heard too much falsehood to not recognize it for what it is. Obama showed a brilliant understanding by simply leaving McCain's statements as they were on the debate record. No counter comment was really needed.

________UPDATE________
For a capsule view of what is "winnable" and not, the Immelman campaign website excerpts a recent report from Mosul, Iraq:

Iraqis Await Resurrection of Scarred Mosul
REUTERS - Oct. 26, 2008

MOSUL, Iraq – Five years of war have reduced much of Mosul to rubble, and U.S. and Iraqi authorities are pledging to deliver on long-time promises to rebuild as they launch a new campaign to rout a stubborn insurgency. …

Near a giant U.S. military base, American humvees rumble down “Baghdad Highway.” The thoroughfare is lined by buildings flattened into heaps of cinderblock or pockmarked by mortar blasts and bullets.

Sewage runs freely and cows graze around mounds of litter. Shops keep their metal gates shut tight, and people stay indoors. At dusk the air is thick with burning trash. …

“When anyone arrives in Mosul today, he would think it is a battleground,” said the minister, Farouq Abdul-Qadir, ticking off a list of problems: an ancient sewage system, a woefully inadequate power supply, high unemployment, and a slowing but still grim drumbeat of assassinations and bomb attacks.

“In the past, the problem for reconstruction was security, and the same problem exists now. We still don’t have full security in Mosul,” he said.

“Abject failure”

Since 2003, the United States has spent millions of dollars in Mosul to improve electricity, overhaul army facilities, rehabilitate schools and on other works. …

U.S. Brigadier General Tony Thomas, commander of U.S. forces in Mosul, said a recent Iraqi initiative to follow military operations with millions of dollars’ worth of reconstruction had been an “abject failure.” …

On October 15, Iraqi and U.S. forces began their third major military operation in Mosul since May. They will go house to house in search of insurgents and weapons caches. …

Violence and decay

Rebuilding a city still marred by violence is not easy.

Earlier this year, U.S. soldiers visited a school in western Mosul they were planning to renovate. Soon afterwards, the headmaster received a call warning him to send the children home early. A car bomb flattened the school that afternoon. …

—

Rubble, not being rebuilt while the occupation continues, occupation troops visiting a school then eliminated as "damaged goods," it all fits a story of a leadership faction making the occupation always harder than pre-occupation times to keep "on message" for the Iraqi people. It appears the universal sentiment among Iraqi factions is to end the occupation and have a US troop withdrawal, and then by civil war or measures short of that to work out their future among themselves, for themselves. Talking "surge" or otherwise does not seem to counter or undo that reality.

SENATE RACE - A blanket mailing, a targeted mailing, and the myth that high-tech wind energy jobs will be everywhere.

It seems the wind turbine is the new symbol of environmentalism, cure of balance of payment imbalances [aka "energy independence" or "ending dependence on foreign oil," etc.], and the shorthand image for envisioning a future yielding of great jobs everywnere to be every state's answer to a better future for its work force.

How all that is expected to work out is of course unclear, and devils are in details. For now large corporations dominate large wind energy unit production, with the Europeans well ahead, as Boeing was when Airbus started.

In effect, yes, Bob Olson was right locally to seize the issue before others did, and he was right to suggest the alternative to large wind turbines was smaller distributed ones, each part of the power grid, along with some stand alone farm and other local installations. Winds, on average, average out if the geographical area is great, so that local wind intensity changes can be handled by the grid as less variable in aggregate than if localized. A single large turbine failure or wind farm failure, tornados do happen, can be tolerated, and the more distributed the sources, the better grid demand variance can be handled. And yes, a shift to renewable energy is needed. Ultimately, all energy is solar. Solar energy reaching earth makes the winds blow, the biomass grow, and it made the oil and coal deposits over geological time by growing the organic matter that later became overlain into formed pockets of oil, gas, coal, and oil shale, tar sands, etc.

But saying all energy ultimately is solar, is like saying life is like an endless river. So what, how does that translate to help make reality better today and tomorrow?

_________
On the same day, yesterday, I got the Franken positive we-are-the-world enviro targeted mailing, an 8-1/2 x 11 four page glossy paper thing; plus the generic orange hate-and-fear mongering item from NRA saying I need Norm Coleman, gun-wise, since I need to hate and fear others.

Each mailing has premises and its differing goals behind it, with the ultimate goal of capturing votes one at a time. Each carries its own cachet. You may find one thing or another more convincing, but I find the Franken intrusion into the quiet space of my home less an intrusion, and more promising of a sounder policy and mind and intent, than the Coleman/NRA half-page cardstock, and its insultingly simplistic sophistry and misstatement. Here are the images. The middle two Franken pages are the mailer inside, the others the address page and outer "back." As always, click to enlarge and read. Enjoy.

My presidential pick - Obama-Biden, go with quality and reject expedient self-centered decision making.

Either Barack Obama, or if mid-term there is need, Joe Biden could manage the nation without major mishap or blunder.

McCain is doubtful that way, in terms of temperament and as representing no break from the failed Bush presidency, with which he admits he voted 90% of the time.

For more detail: The NY Times Obama endorsement was extensively excerpted, here, and as excerpted is true in my mind and expresses thoughts I also hold and have independently reached.

Finally, my bottom line, the Palin choice was an insult to the nation and to every sentient voter in it. To selfishly play to a selfish faction of his own party, one he in the past has denounced, and to let them make his choice for him and to uncritically accept the chosen unfit individual, Sarah Palin, as VP running mate says very much about the true character of John McCain, and of what it says, nothing is good. It shows weakness and compromise, not statesmanship, not anywhere near to statesmanship. It is GOP business as usual, and if you liked the last eight years, well --- bless you.

_______UPDATE_______
On the Palin pick, one friend characterized it as, McCain cashed in all of his credibility for a gimmick.

Barkley and Tinklenberg - with little difference between them, are recognized that way via St. Cloud Times endorsements. However ---

I favor Franken and Immelman.

St. Cloud Times and the Barkley endorsement, here. St. Cloud Times and the Tinklenberg endorsement, here. The tradition is to endorse and in the editorial explain the thinking. I will endorse here, but we all know enough about how things have unwound, about the choices, that I will not argue my choices as much as state them with only a part of the thinking presented.

Let's be truthful. In the Senate race and in the Sixth District race, there is no Paul Wellstone. This post is dedicated to his memory - whenever you talk candidates there has to be a political gold standard, and for Minnesota that is Paul Wellstone. He was closest to what I would want in a federal government responsive to the need to protect the poor from the ravages and indifference of the wealthy, and then to protect the wealthy from each other. When such protection is lax or removed, when regulation is deregulated, the ravaging of the worse of the wealthy and their motives has been seen - an economic meltdown of unusual proportion, led in part by creation of casino-like derivatives, "swaptions" and such, with mortgage-bundling and securitization to where the underlying quality of long term mortgage debt was ignored to produce more of it because it was not held by the originator but fobbed onto investment outlets such as pension funds and insurance coverage trust pooled money. It was Wall Street running amok. And then it was the former head of Goldman Sachs, having made himself a mid to high nine figure wealth that way, coming forward as the George W. Bush Secretary of the Treasury and saying, "We have taken your economy hostage and will kill it if not paid a $700 billion ransom."

The ransom was paid, via, as our trusted and loved government will do, taking the three page Paulson ransom note and producing a pork-laden 450 page bill.

Into that morass, we need to reintegrate the kind of integrity that Wellstone had and that now seems missing. We need the compassion for the little guy that Wellstone had. We need another Wellstone.

The closest we have is Franken.

Franken at least can and does make the promise to respect and follow the Wellstone legacy. To me that is decisive, because I look when he says it and I believe it is sincere. I believe the stories of Frannie Franken's family surviving on Social Security but doomed without it, are part of a background different from Norm Coleman's and his spouse's. I believe Franken will be true to family roots.

In the Sixth district, with the public's regard for Congress now at an all time low, we can see why that is. The two party system has totally failed us. We could have had a two party system give us quality and brains - Bob Olson from the DFL, Aubrey Immelman from the GOP. Instead party bosses and ideologues present their sorry shadow people - revolving door lobbyist Elwyn Tinklenberg, theocrat and neo-McCarthyite, Michele Bachmann.

It is tempting to say, give me a third choice. Barkley is that, but little different than Tinklenberg as a crypto-Republican running as something else; they have common roots and common ties through the history of the IP and each is close with the IP bosses, Barkley being one.

Barkley is not a reasonable alternative to much of anything. A second Republican to Coleman, ideologically, and tainted via the Tinklenberg endorsement the IP pulled off after the DFL had made an identical mistake.

So Franken for Senate, is how I will vote.

Immelman, the write-in choice for the Sixth Congressional District is my other choice and has my vote for Congress. While I expect he differs with me on the reproductive rights and choice issue, he is refreshing as a conservative with a pragmatic and humanistic view against war as an instrument of policy and a tool to enforce a national will upon other nations. He completely rejects the neocon view that we have an unmatched military so let's bully somebody, or bully a few others.

Surely a write-in has to be seen as having little chance of being elected. But there is more to voting than picking a race horse and betting money.

Surely Bob Anderson, the IP ballot choice election day has a better chance than a write-in, and he has the appeal of not being either Tinklenberg or Bachmann.

Bob Anderson is to be commended for how he stood up to his party bosses and said no to the Tinklenberg arrangements, and ran.

However, the governing motive for a voter should always be - pick the best person, the one you believe would best do the job, the one whose integrity and capability you most trust.

Based on that: Aubrey Immelman for Congress is how I will vote.

Also, based on picking the best of what's offered regardless of polling or other indicators, I will vote for Al Franken for Senator.


_______________
This might be my final word this way, because once you've said, "Here's my choice," there's little to add. Poll-chasing and local media endorsements of one candidate or another carry little weight in my forming a judgment. I might note endorsements, as I have done, and some might give them weight in election decision making. I like to know what the papers say and why, but it has little or no true influence on my vote. Each person has his/her way to decide, and there is good reason to have a secret ballot. And there might be major breaking news in the last week before balloting.

If you know what you are doing vote. If not, stay home. You can only mess things up by ignorant voting. And the chance of ignorant or insufficiently informed voting increases for contests lower on the ballot.

That is why I will post separately on city council choices.

Everyone knows Obama-Biden vs. McCain-Palin, and has thought before reaching a final choice. But city council, or judicial candidates or county commissioners, that part of the ballot is where name recognition alone or incumbency alone might be too big a factor.

USGS study of the right migratory bird and genetic tracking of avian influenza viral makeup indicates potential pandemic strain might reach the US.

Pintail ducks were the study species yielding evidence contradicting earlier more reassuring work on other species. See here and here.

No complete genetically identical virus was found, but

Released: 10/27/2008 11:49:09 AM
In an article published this week in Molecular Ecology, USGS scientists observed that nearly half of the low pathogenic avian influenza viruses found in wild northern pintail ducks in Alaska contained at least one (of eight) gene segments that were more closely related to Asian than to North American strains of avian influenza.

Elwyn Tinklenberg on the record --- He is anti-choice.

Here:

He declared himself a pro-life Democrat - a different position on abortion than child safety advocate and Democrat Patty Wetterling ran on last election in the district.

"It's (pro life) been my perspective since the early days of my life as a minister," said Tinklenberg.

Nothing could be clearer. It has been his consistent stance since his days preaching.

Who is Elwyn Tinklenberg, do YOU know who you're sending your money to, and why he is leaving clear gaps in the resume?

An unaltered image of El Tinklenberg, Candidate for Congress. He has been a revolving door career politician-consultant-lobbyist most of his adult life, yet does not disclose such a status in any reassuring way. The door has revolved - pulpit, to town board and mayor of Blaine in Anoka County; consulting; working years for Anoka County [doing what, is undisclosed, but it appears arranging contracts ("pork" some might say) for the County and those it does business with - while having received media heat for no-bid contracting while heading MnDOT], being on contract to the county as its rail authority lobbyist, being at a PR-flak-lobbying firm (Goff&Howard, see, e.g., here), MnDOT head, and forming his own consultancy, Tinklenberg Group, which I contend has been lobbying, with he himself lobbying, but with he and group not wholly registered that way.

In his past he has had his name associated with entities besides the Goff & Howard firm noted above that lobby within our state, see, here, here, here and here; while he has registered himself and filed reports as lobbyist for two others, see, here and here (identifying himself and his Tinklenberg Group business-lobbying affiliation).

And he scoffs and bristles at being called a revolving door lobbyist, and says ONLY two past activities matter, not the lobbying, in his most recent (and misleading by omission) mailing to this household:



If you read and rely on that, you'd never know a thing about the revolving door's constant turning throughout the man's life.

A "follow the money" view of the man, what he does and believes and advocates in relation to his personal cashflow and income potential is interesting to consider, as well as checking to see how much, if any, of his own money he's ever put into his Congressional campaign (where he asks others to fund it).

Another question concerns his campaign disbursements, how he spends the money you might send him, how much is paid out to close family and to former or present members of his consultancy, Tinklenberg Group. The FEC has the data, have a look. The names Anna Ritchie and Amanda Vickstrom are examples respectively of Elwyn Tinklenberg's family and business insiders drawing out as "salary" substantial campaign funds that were contributed by voters and taxpayers from within and outside of Minnesota's Sixth District.

Michele Bachmann's musings over anti-Americanism of others (against whom she's not running) obscure the fact that her attention should be more focused upon Elwyn Tinklenberg, the revolving door lobbyist-career politician seeking her seat.

And while many nationwide have been reported uncritically sending bushels of cash to someone they probably know little about, the question is, "Well, can't they just go to his campaign website and read his online biography and find out who he is?"

Not exactly.

http://www.tinklenberg08.com/bio.html - states only:

He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota at Duluth and attended seminary at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He served as a United Methodist Minister in Blaine, Minnesota from 1977 to 1986.

While serving on the city council for 4 years and as Mayor of Blaine from 1987 to 1996, Tinklenberg quickly gained a reputation as an expert in the field of transportation, eventually serving as Governor Jesse Ventura's Commissioner of Transportation from 1999 to 2002. Charged with managing the day-to-day operations of the department's 5,500 employees and $2 billion annual budget, he worked directly with the legislature to secure funding for the state's first light rail, the development of a regional commuter plan, and a (short-term) doubling of the state transportation budget. In 2003 he served on the Board of Directors for the American Public Transportation Association.

In 2006, Tinklenberg ran for congress in Minnesota's sixth district. He eventually lost out on an opportunity to run in the general election when he was narrowly defeated by Patty Wetterling in a bid for the DFL endorsement.

Currently, Tinklenberg is President of The Tinklenberg Group, a consulting firm that specializes in transportation and related issues affecting government and businesses.

Moreover, Elwyn Tinklenberg has myspace and facebook entries, which are the same as or less inclusive of what his adult life's efforts have been and what he does for his money. (His facebook presence is via linking to the campaign website.)

As already noted, the man's history includes registered lobbying - the Minnesota CFB had him identifying himself as top lobbyist for a real estate development at the Brockton Rd. Hwy 94 area in Hennepin County, where he wanted to pave all over the place with possibly hazardous taconite tailings, and for a Northstar related promotional effort out of Anoka County, his home grounds for most of his career politician-lobbyist lifetime, once he stepped out of the pulpit.

Remember that phrase, "But wait, there's more"?

There's this, where it appears some 'splaining is due, of what the man himself had to say of his fuller-than-campaign-revealed work history, this time with dates and a few more "entries;" italics added for things the website leaves unspoken:

He was appointed Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Transportation in January 1999 by Governor Jesse Ventura. Prior to that, Tinklenberg headed the public policy team with the public relations and government relations firm of Goff & Howard, Before joining Goff and Howard Tinklenberg was employed by Anoka County for 11 years, including six years as Manager of Public Services. Tinklenberg served 14 years on the Blaine City Council, including 10 years as Mayor from 1986 until 1996. He was President of the North Metro Mayors Association from 1990 until 1996 and led the North Metro Crossing coalition, a transportation advocacy group, from 1990 until 1994. He also has served as President of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance. Previous government service also includes membership on the Metropolitan Transit Advisory Board, the former Regional Transit Board and the Legislature's Major Transportation Projects Committee. He was instrumental in creation of the Northstar Corridor Development Authority between Minneapolis and St. Cloud and in the planning for the commuter-rail demonstration event in July 1997. Tinklenberg is a graduate of the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Copyright Institute of Transportation Engineers Aug 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

###

Do you believe he did all that, without being a lobbyist, a status he denies? Do you think pigs can fly?

You might ask yourself, "Why do a bunch of transportation engineers have him saying more of his lobbying and PR ties than he cares to tell voters whom he wants to send him to Congress?" Does that suggest to you that the truth is an elastic thing to the man to be stretched, cut and tailored to the audience he's playing to? It suggests that to me.

I suppose voters are deemed by Tinklenberg as best left on a need-to-know basis, and the less they know the better things are - according to his needs --- that's my guess.

Tinklenberg was not merely a member of lobbying entities North Metro Mayors Association and The Minnesota Transportation Alliance. He was President. He was boss of those shows. And for lobbying firm Goff & Howard, "he headed the public policy team," and most voters realize that to influence and shape public policy from outside the legislature and agencies, you lobby, which that firm clearly does now.

What sorts of things, heading the "public policy team" at Goff & Howard could be buried skeletons? I do not know, but the Goff & Howard website gives this pair of screenshots, as always click to enlarge, and they say that the firm's had Polaris and its ATV business as a client "for over a dozen years," a time frame which includes Tinklenberg's leadership tenure there, and the firm touts that it has shamelessly lobbied for ATV proliferation despite the havoc these motorized devices cause the environment and the nuisance they represent to environmentalists, hikers, campers, or hunters using public forest trails to get to favored hunting sites and not wanting noise or extensive rutting to ruin the landscape and harm the environment.

ATVs are an environmental nightmare. But compromise has resulted from the vigorous lobbying on both sides of that nuisance issue. See, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And it appears Tinklenberg was their champion - in exchange for a fee.



Before ATV use became a nuisance there were Polaris snowmobiles used wrongly and where banned, the latter still being a problem, see here.

Here is a screenshot showing Goff & Howard touting it's lobbying effectiveness:



And there is Tinklenberg as President of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance, which registers with the State as doing lobbying and where it's website touts benefits of membership in terms of legislative contacts and access - if not lobbying, certainly something close, including that Federal Fly-in, for what, but to have interests discussed and attended to:



In the past, when not a candidate wanting to avoid the revolving-door nature of his past, Tinklenberg's past was more openly disclosed, e.g. in January 1999, this was part of a press release,

Elwyn Tinklenberg named Mn/DOT commissioner

Elwyn Tinklenberg, president of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance and the former mayor of Blaine, was appointed as transportation commissioner by Gov. Jesse Ventura today. Tinklenberg has been involved in transportation policy for more than 12 years. He directed a transportation consulting firm where he worked to secure transportation improvements throughout the state, studied the feasibility of commuter rail projects and explored potential commuter rail corridors.

From 1991 to 1997, Tinklenberg was the manager of public services for Anoka County. [...] Since 1996, Tinklenberg served as a board and executive committee member of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance and served as president in 1998.

There is the advocacy site, "MnLRT -- Minnesotans for Light Rail Transit," (which has not registered as lobbying in-state), which reported much MnDOT and other activity of the kind they advocated, making mention in their timeline, for January 1999, that when appointed by Ventura to head MnDOT, Tinklenberg was "President of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance." I defy you to find Tinklenberg not hiding that situation, at present - and if not hiding it, why is it going unmentioned in the official campaign bio blurb? Unimportant? Immaterial to voters making a choice?
Get real.

Now, there is misrepresentation by omission, and there can be misrepresentation by active and intentional misstatement, where culpability can be greater because motive to mislead is more manifest. And Elwyn Tinklenberg apparently in March of 2008 released a campaign letter/statement, saying in relevant part [with bracketed commentary added and not in original]:

Dear DFL Friends:

Over the last few months, my campaign has worked diligently and in earnest to reach out to the activists of the district and to earn your support for my candidacy for congress in the 6th District.

With a message focused on optimism, progress and vision, we have been writing, calling, emailing and meeting with the delegates to the senate district conventions. We have held over 25 house parties and [...] put forward a campaign that is disciplined, competent, inspiring and focused [...]

In the course of meeting with delegates, I and my staff were met with some questions that both surprised and disturbed us. I feel that it’s important to clear up the speculation that has apparently been running wild [...] The first of these issues had to do with whether or not I am a federal lobbyist or do federal lobbying without being registered. The following are the guidelines for federal lobbying registration:

[A denial of being a federal lobbyist follows while ignoring the more fundamental question, is he or is he not a revolving door lobbyist, at any level, doing lobbying in exchange for money]

At no time have I met these guidelines. If at any time I had, I would have registered federally, as I have with the State when I’ve been required to hold meetings with State legislators on behalf of clients.

That being said, I am proud of the work I’ve done on behalf of cities, counties and businesses that were seeking support for transportation projects.

The second issue had to do with taconite tailings, a by-product of iron mining, and speculation that I was involved in a project that was potentially exposing people to asbestos and the resulting cancer risk.

This is a horrible accusation and particularly so because my first wife died of cancer and I would never be involved in anything that would expose others to the misery my family went through.

This is a rumor that was invented two years ago by a staffer for the Wetterling campaign and I believed it had been refuted effectively at that time. I am saddened to see it resurfacing in an attempt to damage my character.

The project I have worked on is sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) and is funded by a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Agency. The goal of the project is to conduct additional testing of by-products of taconite mining in the western portion of the iron range for suitability as transportation aggregate. [...] A secondary goal is to identify potential markets for the use of this material as a transportation aggregate, should the testing support it.

That’s the work in which I have been involved. The use of these western range materials in this way has consistently been approved by MnDOT, NRRI, the PCA and the EPA. Additional testing and monitoring is ongoing and should any concerns surface, I’m certain the University would suspend the project; an action I would support.

For additional information you can contact Larry Zenko at the National Resources Research Institute. [Every Crabgrass reader is encouraged to do exactly that, and ask Zanko (correct spelling} whether he said or did a thing about answering the question of whether taconite tailings are safe for use in paving and/or whether taconite tailings are, themselves and independent of any possible "asbestos" content they might have, safe and noncarcinogenic - and please ask him what the State Health Department and U. Minn three year study started Jan 2008 is for, relative to a 2007 discovery of a history of an extensive mesithelioma cancer deaths among taconite miners throughout the iron range, independent of whether to the east or west of any suggested demarcation line, the suppression of which led to replacement of the head of the Minneosta Department of Health.]

It is important in this endorsement process that we remember the numbers of new people who are turning out to participate in Democratic politics, nation-wide. They are doing so because the energy and positivity of the presidential campaigns and our successes over the last couple of years, have inspired them to believe we are headed in a new direction. [and whom we would not want to disillusion or mislead]

Please continue to contact me with any questions you have going forward. If you’d like to see a copy of the taconite study, it is available from my staff and you are welcome to view it.

Sincerely,

El Tinklenberg

What's the story, Elwyn Tinklenberg? Is that a full defense, or a glide-and-slide shading of facts to mislead rather than illuminate? Is it sophistry and manipulating words, or straight and direct and fully respectful of the truth. Is a lobbyist past viewed as something to deny and avoid by getting into "federal lobbyist" definition distinctions, hair-splitting when the question is, Elwyn Tinklenberg, Is your lobbyist past an embarrassment to you, and if so, why exactly?

You decide. If you vote in the Sixth District decide election day, and if you think of sending money, decide before mailing a check. There's more evidence to consider.

What was Tinklenberg doing other than dispensing contract pork while "manager of public services for Anoka county"? Just as he has had pork dispensed to Tinklenberg Group, after leaving MnDOT October 2002, and forming and registering his business entity, Tinklenberg Group, with the Minnesota Secretary of State, November 2002.

How exactly should the gaps Elwyn Tinklenberg is deliberately leaving in his current campaign resume be fleshed out, and then, why did he choose to leave part of his past unsaid? Fill in the gaps of your resume. Explain what you did. Who you were.

This blog has presented much of the evidence, from diverse available online sources, attained by email and public data disclosure requests, and posted via document images and analysis. This concerns the issue of taking five-figure money to promote the possibly cancerous taconite tailings for use in paving statewide and nationwide, and the promotion of competing road projects of Minnesota municipalities, where differing projects were at stake and limited federal funding available, where interest in one project conflicted with the interests of those wanting another, and Tinklenberg Group representing both.

Here are a number of representative, not an exhaustive listing, of past posts at this site, concerning Tinklenberg and what he's been doing for cash.


Regarding taconite: see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (mentioning that Tinklenberg Group had been paid at least $94,000 for promoting taconite tailings use in paving), here, here, here (with this), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.


Regarding the I-35 bridge and Tinklenberg responsibility/neglect while heading MnDOT: see here, and here.


Regarding conflicting road projects and other municipal Tinklenberg-fee-generating activity: see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.


For further materials from this blog concerning Tinklenberg, for example taconite, any reader can do an advanced Google search, specific to this site,

zaetsch.blogspot.com

and with the search words being tinklenberg plus others to narrow the hit-list, for example this one, (note search terms at the top page window), this example, or this example. Or this, without the Tinklenberg name in the search window, or this, again without Tinklenberg's name in the search.

I will close with this:


The identical opening image, Elwyn Tinklenberg trying to tart himself up in Wellstone Green. Looking currency green, more than Wellstone green.

_____UPDATE______
There was some media questioning of no-bid contracts when Tinklenberg headed MnDOT, see, e.g., here. That history, and leaving the period of contract administration for Anoka County off the resume, raises a question of whether any no-bid problems were involved in the Tinklenberg career before going to MnDOT. That's speculative for now, I have seen no evidence either way.

______FURTHER UPDATE_______
Another Crabgrass link, that links to a different blogger, Gary Gross, who has a GOP leaning in general, is here.

______FURTHER UPDATE________
My most recent discovery of Tinklenberg lobbying, not necessarily his most recent activity that way, posted here, concerns his representing developers wanting to profit from closing and converting the Crystal Airport. That one sentence in his letter to DFL convention voters certainly rings true, "I am proud of the work I’ve done on behalf of cities, counties and businesses that were seeking support for transportation projects." Every class of client, he's had them, the Goff & Howard thing, the firm being an ATV lobbyist, developers for the Stone's Throw project [this link, mentioning his ties and connections with the Bohn lobbying family, ATV lobbyists], so that not only does he represent competing municipalities for scarce federal transportation cash, he also represents competing developer groups, for the limited [and now shrunken] housing buyer market, via Ramsey Town Center rail stop work in Anoka County, Stone's Throw development in northern Hennepin County, and this more southerly hope to turn a regional airport into cash for those paying him cash. A hired gun believing in the merit of the aims of people handing Tinklenberg Group checks. Helping Oberstar in the Eighth District rid his nest of mine waste, by promoting at trade shows and among highway departments and rail and shipping interests the idea of sending the mine waste all over to pave with it as aggregate, while health concerns remain unanswered. A go anywhere say anything kind of guy, hoping to go to DC where his connections and rolodex wlll expand and prosper. He has not even committed to shutting down Tinklenberg Group if elected, or has he? Does any reader have that answer?

In that campaign website blurb, he calls himself "expert in the field of transportation" while I have used my own term, highwayman. Not necessarily with pistol saying, "Stand and deliver" but gaining a comfortable living by working the highways, whichever side of the revolving door he finds himself on. And GOP bloggers have noted deficiencies of this highwayman, while MnDOT has slowly released materials about the old, fallen I-35 bridge, but not the email showing what exactly the head highway man knew, and when he knew it. Negligence during his watch must, until the email trail is out, be assessed based on a "should have known" and "should have acted" standard - and some people are publishing that way. Along those lines, there is this site-specific Google of Crabgrass = tinklenberg MnDOT.