Can Dan Powers Beat Big Oil Puppet John Kline In 2012?

When people consider what's insane about Minnesota politics, their minds immediately jump to deranged religious fanatic Michele Bachmann. But, as we saw in 2006, John Kline is an ideological doppleganger to Bachmann, just as extreme and just as detrimental to Minnesota families. In 2006 Blue America endorsed Coleen Rowley in her run against Kline. Two years later she did a guest post for us exposing what she termed the devious tactics of the most "out of whack" Republican in the country, still very much worth reading when looking into Kline's shameful political career. Yesterday told me why she's supporting Dan Powers for the seat Kline is still holding.

Dan Powers convinced me that he was and would stay issues-based when he successfully sought and obtained our Minnesota 2nd District’s Democratic Farmer Labor party’s endorsement in the lead-up to  the 2010 election. When the two candidates for DFL endorsement got asked about ending the wars, the other candidate quickly went with the party line including Obama’s stance for military escalation in Afghanistan but Dan Powers stayed true to his original position that the U.S. needs to withdraw and end these military occupations as soon as possible. That questioning provided a window into his more principled mindset and principles are sorely lacking amongst politicians generally.

That other candidate, garden variety Democrat Shelley Madore, did worse against Kline (37%) than any other Democrat in memory... and she wants to run again. Dan is a better choice for the 2nd CD, directly south of St Paul. He's been campaigning on a progressive platform that includes an important green energy component and we asked him to explain how his own vision for a clean energy future differs from the shocking Big Oil record Kline has racked up. Here's his guest post:

Our economy is in crisis in part because of the house of cards we built on cheap energy, cheap oil to be specific. All of the flaws in our economy were revealed when oil prices spiked at over $100 per barrel and gasoline prices reached more than $4 per gallon in some parts of the country. Too much of our economy is based on oil. The effects on the country were not subtle, raising the costs of everything, putting a bigger and bigger squeeze on consumers. Our recovery is going to take years.
 
These rhetorical questions are not being answered by our current policies and it is past time we found the answers. Are we secure as a nation when we depend on others for our basic energy needs? How much do we spend every year to maintain our access to oil from the Middle East? Why do we continue to make a mess of our foreign policy always supporting one dictator after another just to keep the oil flowing? When can we began to make the correct move and grow up as a Nation and quit wasting time, money, lives and resources? How much of our economy is tied to oil and the problems associated with oil? This carbon economy that we have come to depend on is polluting our air, soil and water. How much of our environment are we going to let be destroyed either through willful neglect or accident? The Gulf disaster last year and many others have shown us what can happen when problems occur. More than just the cost of the oil, all of the lives affected show us we must do more. How long until the coast lines or fisheries recover? How much pollution is too much? Now is our chance to create those jobs based on clean renewable energy and make our world a better place.
 
The problem is too important to be passive and wait for the market forces to push us along. This is the type of investment and guidance that must come from the federal government.
 
While we can’t do much about the costs of oil in Saudi Arabia we can invest in clean renewable energy here at home. Rather than just depending on oil and coal we must greatly increase our investment in solar, wind, hydrothermal, biomass, and other renewable energy sources. We must also invest in new and existing infrastructure to get these energy sources to market. All of these steps and more give us the Independence we must have and the choices that will give our economy the lower cost and stability we need to grow. 
 
To make our transition from oil, especially foreign oil, we must forget about finding one solution to solve all of our problems. Since President Nixon was in office every President has talked about reducing or eliminating our reliance on oil with little effect. Often time’s one grand solution (silver bullet) was proposed, but the long term commitment and investment was missing. Too many groups trying to get money and nobody interested in solving the problem. Now we must pay for the mistakes and miss-starts of the last 40 years. Solar alone is not the answer nor is wind. We will need to continue domestic oil production as well as a host of other energy production methods as we transition to other less polluting or zero polluting energy sources. With stable, clean, abundant, renewable energy coming from multiple sources our economy, environment and our Nation will be strong. Together we can make a difference, but we must start now.

By the way, Kline has taken over $140,000 in thinly veiled bribes from Big Oil and Gas so far. He has never voted against any of their special interests legislation.

Freedom... We're Talking About Your Freedom

This is a tough post for me to write and I've been avoiding it. I encouraged Noah and Ken to work on Wikileaks instead and I referred to it a few times in Streams of Consciousness, our nightly wrap-ups. And I just hoped people would get their fill reading smart commentators like Digby on the subject. That's because I lived through it, or something just like it, before-- from afar. In 1971 I was spending a few months in Kabul when Daniel Ellsberg slipped the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times... and all hell broke lose. People were even talking about it there. This week there were two last straws that made me go for it-- the tweet from Ron Paul (below) and this open letter to Amazon, urging a boycott on the super-website from Daniel Ellsberg himself.

December 2, 2010

I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating today its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing.

For the last several years, I’ve been spending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That’s over. I ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices.

I understand that many other regular customers feel as I do and are responding the same way. Good: the broader and more immediate the boycott, the better. I hope that these others encourage their contact lists to do likewise and to let Amazon know exactly why they’re shifting their business. I’ve asked friends today to suggest alternatives, and I’ll be exploring service from Powell’s Books, Half-Price Books, Biblio and others.

So far Amazon has spared itself the further embarrassment of trying to explain its action openly. This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear-- and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses-- to leak that information. They can send it to Wikileaks (now on servers outside the US), to mainstream journalists or bloggers, or perhaps to sites like antiwar.com that have now appropriately ended their book-purchasing association with Amazon.

Yours (no longer),

Daniel Ellsberg

When Ellsberg finally leaked the Pentagon Papers he had already spent over a year trying to persuade anti-War senators, like William Fulbright (Arkansas wasn't a fiefdom of the Walton Family back then and there were actual independent-minded politicians), Charles Goodell (a Republican who Nixon and Agnew were able to destroy politically) and George McGovern, who told him the First Amendment was all the protection he needed to make it public, but that it wasn't the place of an elected official to do it. In those days, it took forever to do 7,000 pages of photocopying on a xerox machine. There was no wikileaks.com and not even an internet. Imagine.

Rick Perlstein reports extensively on this sad chapter of American history in his brilliant book Nixonland and that's where all the blockquotes below are coming from. The NYTimes began publishing excerpts from the 43 volumes Ellsberg gave them on June 13, 1971-- Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement. The papers showed without doubt that Vietnam was a wrongful war and, in Ellsberg's own words, "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates."

Kissinger found it easy to manipulate the drug-addicted, alcoholic Nixon and he stoked a rage in the always paranoid president to go on a jihad against everyone and everything involved with the leak, even though Nixon's first assessment was that it had nothing to do with him-- it didn't-- and why should he even care. It went from that to injunctions and accusations of treason. Nixon's attempts to force the Times and over a dozen other papers to stop publishing went to the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 that the papers could be published freely.

Justice Brennan's decision argued that press reports that embarrass the government were precisely the reason the First Amendment was invented. Just Black concurred. "Every moment's continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment... [F]or the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says." Just in case the court ruled the other way, the previous evening Mike Gravel, the forty-one-year-old senator from Alaska, had called an extraordinary two-man night "hearing" of his Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds. He began reading aloud from a four-thousand-page typescript-- the historical narrative portion of the Pentagon Papers, provided to him by an anonymous source.

He started at 9:45 p.m. "The story is a terrible one," Gravel warned. "It is replete with duplicity, connivance against the public. People, human beings, are being killed as I speak to you. Arms are being severed; metal is crashing through human bodies." Then he began to weep.

He read for three hours and word spread throughout Capitol Hill and the hearing room was soon packed. He was able to introduce the entire document into the Congressional Record, thwarting Nixon and Kissinger. But they were on the warpath and Nixon seems to have snapped completely and never recovered. Kissinger had figured out that Ellsberg was the leaker within a couple of days and destroying him became a White House crusade. Remind anyone of Peter King, the demented Republican congressloon from Long Island? He wants Julian Assange prosecuted as a terrorist and he seems to be cracking up the same way Nixon did.

The he cacophony of outrage and hysteria engendered by the Wikileaks disclosures has ranged from the embarrassing (the NYT’s Bill Keller admission that he allowed the US government vet his reports) through to the downright bloodthirsty (see calls for Julian Assange’s assassination from the likes of John Hawkins, Marc Thiessen et al).

But the prize for breathtaking hypocrisy must surely go to Long Island GOP Congressman Peter King who has been all over the airwaves since the leaks began, demanding that Wikileaks be treated like Al Qaeda and placed on the list of foreign terrorist organizations. “Their activity is enabling terrorists to kill Americans,” he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday. “Wikileaks is an accessory to this, they are taking information which they know is classified, which they know can cost life. They are as guilty as (Pfc Bradley Manning) is.”

What Peter King neglected to tell Morning Joe, or NBC’s Matt Lauer and Fox News for that matter, is that when it comes to supporting foreign terrorist organizations, the L.I. politician is not only in a league of his own in Washington but is the only living Congressman who can say that he owes his political career almost entirely to the ties he forged with one group of foreign terrorist bombers and gunmen.

In the wake of November’s mid-term gains for the GOP, Peter King is poised to take over the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee in the new session. That is an extraordinary turnabout for a politician who spent most of the previous thirty years as the most prominent American supporter of the Irish Republican Army, earning in the process the hostility of his own GOP colleagues, the US, British and Irish governments and the attention of the FBI, the Secret Service and Britain’s intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6.

Americans should be grateful to Julian Assange but many seem to be hysterically and irrationally aroused by criminals like King and the guilty parties brought to light by the leaks. John Grooms, taking a more balanced perspective at Creative Loafing, thinks Rep. King ought to switch to decaf:

WikiLeaks’ release of a quarter-million State Dept. cables is a welcome, up-close look inside the foreign policy bubble. You want “transparency in government”? You got it. The leaks will probably be the center of media reporting for the rest of the week — accompanied by the usual Chicken Little-style panic and anger from the right wing. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the chair (come January) of the House Homeland Security Committee, is especially freaked out. King says WikiLeaks “presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States,” and wants the group to be classified, and prosecuted, as terrorists and spies. Never mind that re-classifying whoever you don’t like as a “terrorist” has been the standard method of despots for over 100  years. And never mind that the cables were “released” after the involved newspapers let the White House know about the various topics of interest in the cables, and even made some changes and deletions requested by the government. Hopefully, Rep. King will soon switch to decaf.

...At the Fox Nation site, nearly every comment on the story by their readers was “This guy (Wikileaks honcho Julian Assange) needs to be eliminated, he’s a traitor, Pres. Palin will put an end to these leaks [this is not a joke], blah blah blah.” Then I noticed the Fox Nation “mission statement,” sitting right there on the site’s front page, which says it is “for those opposed to excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought.” Hmm, I guess their idea of freedom of thought only applies to those with whom they agree. Reminds me of late-’70s gay Brit singer Tom Robinson, who sang that the right’s version of “freedom” actually means “freedom from the likes of you.”

Fair enough. It also reminds me of former FBI agent/whistle-blower/congressional candidate Coleen Rowley, long a Blue America favorite. Coleen has an informed perspective on wikileaks and she wrote about it Saturday at OpEdNews.

Unfortunately, the US corporate PR machine is again triumphing. The naked emperor has shot the little boy trying to yell the truth. About 70% of Americans, misled by the likes of Amy Klobuchar, now declare that ignorance is bliss and they want to see Assange assassinated and WikiLeaks taken out. Only a tiny fraction of critical thinker Americans recognize that what they don't know CAN hurt them.

The last time an Administration got 70% of the country to believe a false proposition (that Iraq was behind 9-11), we launched an unending war that has already killed over a million and, in so doing, we shot ourselves in the foot. So unless Americans are willing to take their heads out of the sand, that's about to happen again. We find ourselves in such an Orwellian tragedy, that if we don't laugh, we'll cry.

Note: I agree with the realists that neither those in the White House nor in the Congress are listening. The elected in Washington DC operate in a kind of lead SKIF that encloses those inside the DC Beltway like Maxwell Smart's old "cone of silence". (So the politicians are truly unable to hear anyone outside that bubble and they are deaf to all except the ir own corporate and special interest funders, which include the powerful Military Industrial Complex war profiteers and also includes the neo-con aligned Likud branch of Israeli warhawks.)

...For the most part, the media seems to view a WikiLeaks truth-telling mechanism and government whistleblowers as trying to upset their easy job of transcribing leaders' press releases. Not surprisingly, much of the press says, "quick shoot the little boy calling the emperor naked." The corporate media is funded by the corporations and wealthy Americans who don't want to pay higher taxes or even pay any taxes and who are largely profiting off the continuing wars.

No one remembers that in the summer of 2001, Richard Clarke was unable to get anyone to pay attention to his plan to stem Al Qaeda terrorism. It seems incomprehensible as we bankrupt ourselves (which, by the way, is and always was Osama Bin Laden's stated goal, to bankrupt the U.S.) that Richard Clarke and others were repeatedly put off during that summer of 2001 when "all their hair was on fire", being told that there was "not one dollar available" for anti-terrorism efforts.

So that's the current horrible situation we find ourselves in at the present moment. The current quagmire devoid of truth on every level is a vortex sucking us all down. A truly independent media mechanism like WikiLeaks and more government whistleblowers would be a huge part of a root solution and that is why those in power are in the process of somehow (whether thru assassination or prosecution), taking them out. WikiLeaks had given me a flicker of hope of perhaps getting a sufficient number of Americans to take their heads out of the sand at least long enough to see the danger all around them, their children and grand children but sadly the Propaganda Machine already has 70% of Americans in agreement that they would prefer not to know the Sorrows of Empire that will befall them (as Chalmers Johnson termed it).

America is very lucky that Bill Keller wasn't the editor of the NY Times when Daniel Ellsberg sent over the Pentagon Papers. People in our generation, on the other hand, are poorer for the quality of editors the Times employs these days:

Criminalizing of Dissent: Defend the RNC 8!

Unfinished Business
-by Coleen Rowley


Sorry to have to remind you all of some of the bad stuff that happened a couple months ago during the RNC (and for interrupting the better mood and additional hopefulness many of us find ourselves having post-election), but there’s an important reason.



If you haven’t seen the just released film “Terrorizing Dissent," please take two minutes to at least watch the trailer. (The full movie can also be watched on-line too.)  The juxtaposition of McCain’s phoney speech-making inside the Republican National Convention with the violent reality that was unfolding outside is quite eye-opening, isn’t it? (The fact that TV and other mainstream media only carried what went on inside the RNC and not outside, contributed to creating the public approval “bump” for the Republican ticket-- certainly not unexpected following such televised extravagant displays but which was critical in 2008 for McCain-Palin to have any chance after Bush’s eight disastrous years.)    

I know many of you who did not participate in the various activities held at the time of the 2008 Republican National Convention (Aug 31- Sept 4) and who did not witness it first hand, may have a hard time believing what an awful combat zone St. Paul was turned into much of the time that week; how pre-emptive raids effectively criminalized dissent; how community police were turned into militarized, dehumanized (and non-identifiable) robo-cops, equipped with tasers, pepper spray and tear gas; and then (unsurprisingly) pushed to over-react and use their chemical weapons and arrest over 800 non-violent citizens, including 40 some journalists. (For more, see this great insider viewpoint by William Cox, RoboCops: Professional Policing of Political Protest-- An Insider's Viewpoint; the Sept. 1st Democracy Now interview of National Lawyers Guild Attorney Bruce Nestor and myself; and "Storm Troopers At the RNC" by Ray McGovern.)

All kinds of irregularities and bad departures from St. Paul’s community policing model occurred.  And the more we learn about the heavy-handed involvement of the Twin Cities’ two (Republican) Sheriffs: Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher (whose deputies were convicted of corruption the week right before the RNC as a result of an FBI sting investigation) and Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek (a McCain Campaign Co-Chairman), as well as diffusion of responsibility amongst a number of federal agencies, the more likely it appears these repressive police actions could have been politically motivated-- deliberately intended to intimidate citizens from exercising their first amendment rights and to convey a false impression to the larger American public of little widespread opposition to the right-wing policies being promoted at the RNC. 
 
Unfortunately the intimidation did work, scaring thousands away from protesting and other activities in St. Paul that week. Watching the surreal scenes that unfolded outside the RNC, it’s amazing any of us citizens had the courage to try, isn’t it?  In fact our little Peace Island Picnic group was only a block away from Mickey’s Diner on Tuesday night, Sept 2nd (having just left the St. Paul “Free Speech Stage” outside the RNC) when police over reacted and shot their chemical weapons into the people on the street.    

Help Defend the RNC 8! Sign the Petition to Dismiss Charges.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably signed hundreds of petitions in the last few years but I believe this one can really impact the situation because it’s focused on one individual (Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner) who possesses the legal wisdom to recognize the wrongfulness in proceeding with a criminal prosecution of this sort that would set dangerous precedent-- dangerous to constitutional rights because it would broaden terrorism to include mere property damage instead of acts dangerous to human life (a provision of the Minnesota Patriot Act that Richard Stanek himself was responsible for pushing through the Minnesota’s legislature after 9-11 when he was the Republican leader of the Minnesota Senate) and blurring terrorism with what was, at most, acts of intended civil disobedience. Most noteworthy is the fact that, once this plan of smearing protesters as terrorists succeeded at the RNC, Republicans carried their McCarthy like tactics a step further, and tried it with Obama himself, alleging that he had “palled with terrorists.” That’s when their bluff was called.  But it was too late for the RNC 8 who were already charged with felony “conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism."

As an aside, I did not know any of the RNC 8 personally before this unprecedented attempt to use the expansive Minnesota Patriot Act to essentially “terrorize dissent” but you can hear them tell their own stories of what happened on this pretty good (35 minute) video at the bottom of the home-page of Friends of the RNC 8. If you’re like me, you can sign their petition on the basis of principle alone: upholding the First Amendment and need for authorities to not blur what was at most planned acts of “civil disobedience” as opposed to acts of real terrorism. 
 
A lot of people from all over the country have already signed the petition but we need thousands more (including you!) to sign it to have a better chance of arguing the charges ought to be dismissed against the eight young people that have become known as the “RNC 8." So please sign the petition and then send it on to others you know who might sign. Also we are trying to get names of people that the District Attorney might recognize as carrying special weight due to their past accomplishments or experience. So if  for example, you’re a retired judge or law enforcement officer or government leader or something like that, please e-mail me so we can highlight your signature when the petition is finally presented.

In case any of you forgot these last few years, dissent IS patriotic.  Protest should not be confused with terrorism because as Thomas Jefferson said a bunch of times in different ways, “Dissent is patriotic!” 

BLOG DAY FOR STEVE SARVI (D-MN)

Senator Amy Klobuchar endorses Steve Sarvi

John Kline boasts one of the most radical right and bizarrely extremist voting records in the entire Congress. In Minnesota only he and Michele Bachmann vote with far right Confederate representatives from Georgia, Texas, and South Carolina. Kline participated in 59 roll call votes regarding Iraq. He voted the straight Bush-Cheney line all 59 times, a breathtaking record even for a radical right Republican. His shameful record is that of the ultimate rubber stamp. Simultaneously, he was also screeching "Support the Troops" while participating in 23 roll call votes regarding military veterans. And 23 times Kline opposed veterans.

In 2006 Blue America supported former FBI agent and American heroine Coleen Rowley who laid the groundwork for the citizens of Minnesota's second CD coming to terms with what they have representing them in Congress. Today Minnesota activists have called for a Blog Day for Steve Sarvi. I asked Coleen if she could help us out with a look at the race.


Kline’s Ignoring of his own Constituents Provides Opening for Iraq War Veteran Steve Sarvi
 
-by Coleen Rowley
 
What if we lived in a country where we learned the president and vice-president had launched a pre-emptive war against an underdeveloped country that posed no imminent threat based on bad and misleading information? Years later the promised “cakewalk” for regime change that they said would cost no more than 30 billion dollars had actually escalated to between 2 and 3 trillion dollars?  And over 4000 troops had been killed along with 30,000 injured.  PTSD suicides were at an all time high.  And the public, who never really supported this pre-emptive war, now viewed the president, vice-president and all those who supported the misbegotten war as incompetent if not downright deceptive?  So much so that even the White House former spokesman feels that way. Unfortunately, this is reality.
 
What if the same scenario was now directed at another country, Iran, with potential plans to provoke an even larger “WWIII”?  What if more than 70% of American citizens opposed this new war and the country’s intelligence agencies reported that Iran is not an imminent threat?  And what if the President claims he still has the power to launch a new war based on authority from the last ongoing quagmire?  Again, this is sadly the reality.
 
Given this situation, it would make sense for war-weary Americans to contact their local representatives to request legislation that would prevent another war without congressional authority (in line with the Constitutional power of Congress to declare war).  This actually happened on December 13, 2007.  Constituents from all over the 2nd District (including Eagan, Shakopee, Apple Valley, Rosemount, Northfield, Burnsville and Red Wing) representing 332 residents and part of a nationwide group of over 160,000, took a simple petition to Representative Kline’s office in Burnsville.  The petition read: Americans don’t want another disastrous war in Iran. Congress must act now and make it clear that President Bush has no authority to strike Iran. Residents wanted to ask Mr. Kline to cosponsor a House Joint Resolution to prevent the President from starting another ill-conceived war.
 
What happened next, unfortunately, was an insult to representative democracy. Instead of meeting with residents, Mr. Kline’s staff gave them a complete run around. Even though our group of constituents, had called ahead to notify staff of the visit, no staff were available to discuss the issue or indicate the Representative’s position. We were advised, at one point, that we could travel to Washington, DC to speak with Kline’s military affairs person. However, the receptionist could not identify who the appropriate staff member would be to contact in DC. As a result, district residents could only leave the petition, with its pages of signatories, at Kline’s office.
 
A week passed and no response. So the leader of our group attempted to contact Kline’s office in Burnsville and DC. After a few fruitless conversations, she finally received a call back from Representative Kline’s District Chief of Staff (who ironically works in Burnsville) who told her that Kline considers the H.J. 64 resolution unnecessary and declared the bill “would not move.” A follow up letter was received on December 24 that said Mr. Kline would monitor the legislation, but did not want to take the military option off the table.
 
It was clear from this run around and evasive action, that Representative Kline favors President Bush’s ability to launch pre-emptive invasions and is not interested in restraining the President from taking such action. Yet this is in direct opposition to the Constitution’s Separation of Powers, which wisely gave the Congress the power to declare war, not the Executive Branch. Mr. Kline continues to ignore constituents in order to march lock-step with the Bush-Cheney Administration, as he has done throughout his terms in office.
 
Perhaps most distressing is the effort that had to be expended by constituents just to find out where their representative stood on this vital issue. Kline has repeatedly resisted calls for public meetings on important issues, choosing to rely on his “tele-town hall” robo calling where hard questions can be ignored or screened, and where planted questions, push polls and other manipulative campaign tactics can easily be used. Democracy just doesn’t work when constituents, especially those with opposing views (but those currently held by a majority of American citizens) can’t access their representatives! Democracy is based on deliberative dialogue and an informed citizenry.  It is a sad day in America when a Representative to our Congress fails to accommodate this most basic feature of representative democracy.
 
Even worse, during the winter of 2007, Kline’s staff called the police on an even larger group of his own constituents who were merely seeking to meet with him. That group, representing 700 other residents had to lobby Kline over the course of six weekly meetings to force him to relent and hold the only town hall meeting he’s held in years in the district. (As far as we could tell-- because he’s refused to answer questions like this-- he hadn’t held any face to face public meetings-- real town halls-- in CD-2 since early 2005 when he stumped in a couple of public libraries for Bush’s plan to privatize social security.) And of course Rep. Kline never followed through on his promise in April 2007 to hold future real town halls. 
 
Kline’s now considered to be the most "out of whack" Republican in the country. So no one should be surprised at the kind of anti-democratic tactics he needs to continue to maintain his grip on power here.
 
But it has gotten progressively more difficult for Kline to maintain this kind of repressive control.  Along with his tax-funded “tele-town” manipulation, Kline, more than ever, needs the corporate and Republican PACs to keep funding his Rovian-style big-buck campaign ads. Iraq War veteran and former city mayor and city administrator Steve Sarvi, on the other hand, has a lot of natural advantages.  He’s not only more knowledgeable of the issues but more in sync with our district’s residents’ needs and beliefs. Sarvi has also got the significant advantage of being on the side of democracy. 
 
Go to ActBlue and help Steve Sarvi bring a little democracy back to Minnesota’s 2nd District!     

EXPOSING JOHN KLINE AND THE DEVIOUS TACTICS OF THE MOST "OUT OF WHACK" REPUBLICAN IN THE COUNTRY

-by Coleen Rowley

"Out of Whackness" is the highly appropriate term that the "Swing State Project" has come up with identifying Republican incumbents who should theoretically be extra vulnerable in a general election based on comparisons between their PVI and their voting record. The article describes them as "the wingnuts hiding in moderate districts." Based on that criteria, our Minnesota CD-2 Congressman John Kline is the most out of whack Republican in the country.

This designation will come as no surprise to Kline's constituents. When first elected, Kline positively crowed about representing George Bush's interests rather than those of his district. His previous position as Vice President of the neo-con inspired “Center of the American Experiment” (Minnesota’s own right-wing think tank), apparently cued him to the need to “finish the job” in Iraq. He already shared Bush’s enthusiasm for expanding the list of countries-- most having no connections to 9-11-- that the U.S. should go to war with. And his answer to: The War on Terror: How Will We Know When the War Is Over? was very much in sync with John McCain’s idea-- give it another 100 years.

As Bush's stock declined nationwide, Kline stopped crowing but his voting record remains 90+ percent lockstep with Bush-Cheney and the GOP. Kline is so partisan that in 2006 he told a group of disabled veterans that he wouldn't support a veterans' benefits bill simply because it was written by a Democrat.

A moderate Republican leader in Minnesota such as former Senator Dave Durenberger has even begun to criticize Kline for his misleading partisan stance on the energy crisis that serves only to enrich fossil fuel producers and auto makers.

But after unsuccessfully stumping for Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security in early 2005, Kline realized that he should no longer broadcast his partisanship. So now he does all he can to keep a low profile in the district. In early 2007, a group of Kline's constituents had to make six trips to Kline's office over the course of two months before he agreed to hold a public town-hall meeting. And even then, it's unlikely the town hall would have occurred but for the fact that Kline suffered some bad press for calling the police on his own district residents. When the people of his district came to his office asking him to do his job, his first instinct was to try to intimidate them with a police presence. Only because a committed group of his constituents refused to back down, did that one town hall meeting take place. Since then, Kline has only held 'tele-town hall' meetings on the phone, where he has complete control over who participates.

So how does one so "out of whack" as Kline keep his seat? First, try to never let any hard questions (like this one) be asked. Never furnish any information about issues or positions on a website or otherwise. (Kline's campaign website in 2006 consisted of only a few general paragraphs.) Don’t hold public meetings. Don't debate congressional challengers. (Kline even refused to supply answers to local newspaper voters' guides prior to the 2006 election.) DO take big money from special interests-- Kline obtained over $600,000 from PACs alone before the 2006 election which gave him almost $1.5 million total to use for negative ad campaigns produced by Rove protégées. Paint oneself as a hero. (The positive portion of Kline's ads in his five previous campaigns all revolved around a couple of photos showing him carrying the "nuclear football" for Ronald Reagan.)

And since 2006, the politician's dream come true: conduct lots of "Tele-Town Hall" robo calling into the district at taxpayer expense. The "Tele-Town Hall" developed by Rodney A. Smith, a former Republican national finance director, was pioneered by Kline and a half-dozen other Republicans in the lead-up to the 2006 elections. It worked so well for them that over a hundred Republicans are now employing this manipulative technology. Just like the screening and scripting that goes into Rush Limbaugh's radio show in terms of ability to pre-screen callers, plant questions, conduct push polls and other subtle campaign ploys and, the best part, it's ALL AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE! Tele-town hall robo calling substitutes for real constituent interaction and has become the foremost tool used to keep "out of whack" Republican incumbents in power.


Although they maintain equally right-wing voting records in terms of being Bush enablers, Kline even beats the truly whacky Michele Bachmann by a few spots for "out of whackness." In Bachmann, Kline has found an eager protege: substituting the "Tele-Town" robo calls for public meetings and turning down all public forum opportunities when you can't control the questions. (Last year, for instance the Humphrey Institute was able to host individual question and answer public policy forums with each of the Minnesota congresspersons and senators except for Kline, Bachmann and one other.)

The challenge is quite clear for Democrat Steve Sarvi, who recently was endorsed by Minnesota’s Democratic Farmer Labor Party to run against Kline. Sarvi is a great candidate. Unlike Kline and Bush, he’s reality based, with real experience on the ground in Iraq (as a Minnesota National Guard member) as well as considerable experience in city management in Minnesota. And Kline’s “out of whackness” does make him potentially vulnerable. But Kline still has the big money advantage given to him from corporate interests as well as the unique access, as an incumbent, to the taxpayer-funded robo-calling system that is said to substitute for real town hall meetings. Sarvi will therefore need to get Kline to answer questions in a public way either by debating or through newspaper forums, or via another real Town Hall meeting. In April 2007 Kline actually promised he would hold another public meeting in a few months. But that was over a year ago, and he's not kept his word. He’s probably hoping no one remembers that promise. Kline’s probably hoping voters only remember the ad about him being the hero who carried the nuclear football for Ronald Reagan. He has to hope that he's beat down the dream of democracy in this district via Rodney Smith's little black robo-calling box so that he never has to ever face constitutents' hard questions ever again. If Sarvi wants to send this out of whack Republican back to Texas, he must remind people what real democracy and real electoral representation is supposed to be.

IF NORM COLEMAN THINKS EVERYTHING IS GOING SO WELL IN IRAQ, MAYBE HE CAN MOVE THERE AFTER AL FRANKEN DEFEATS HIM IN 2008

I haven't been able to talk DWT's best pal in Minnesota, Blue America heroine Coleen Rawley, into challenging her insane Republican congressman, John Kline (who just came back from Iraq babbling how eveything's comin' up roses) to a re-match. Nor have I given up. But Ken and I were so excited when Coleen sent us word of some grassroots action she was involved with on a non-Klinear level.

She wrote that she was so inspired by Ken's and Mike Stark's "brave stance in O'Reilly's driveway" that she and some of her friends decided to go visit Norm Coleman, their rubber stamp senator at his home. Remembering that Coleman and I were co-secretaries of our elementary school class in Brooklyn, Coleen knew I would want to see a picture of his St. Paul home and wonder why he's insisting that people in Minnesota aren't thinking about the occupation of Iraq. (We certainly know he doesn't want them too.)

Apparently his neighbors' yard signs ["Support the troops-- End the War"] weren't doing the trick in getting the message across to the Senator that Minnesotans are concerned about the terrible costs of the ongoing occupation of Iraq so we thought we'd communicate that message a little more clearly.

ANYONE NEED A GOOD AFTERNOON OR EARLY EVENING CRY? COLEEN ROWLEY SENT ME THIS CLIP

And let me just editorialize and say this is because we weren't paying attention in 1999 and because Clinton made it look so easy that we thought even a total incompetent who never did anything right in his whole worthless life could be president of the United States. And this is the result. Let's all say NEVER AGAIN-- NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!

JOHN KLINE STEPS IN A PILE PILE OF CRAP-- ASKS UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA STUDENTS THE WRONG QUESTION

Last year Blue America raised over $22,000 from 1,065 online donors in a bid to replace far right extremist John Kline (MN-02) with former FBI-agent Coleen Rowley, a progressve Democrat. It was one of the saddest moments on an otherwise jubilant night when Kline managed to squeak through with 56% of the vote. I pray Coleen takes him on again. Meanwhile, he's been taking on himself. He recently did a townhall meeting that included a q&a session with college students at the University of Minnesota. Take a look at the video. I bet he wishes he stuck to answering questions instead of asking one.




UPDATE: COLEEN STILL FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT-- FRANKEN TOO

A few minutes after posting this video, I got two messages from Minnesota. One was from Coleen telling me she had posted a piece on Kline at the Huffington Post this morning and I'd like to recommend that everyone interested in learning about the Republican strategy for endless war in the Middle East read it. The other was from my pals at the Minnesota Monitor reporting that Al Franken's senate campaign raised $1.3 million from more than 10,000 contributors in the first quarter. Very healthy.


UPDATE: AND IT ISN'T JUST STUDENTS KLINE IS SHORT-CHANGING

Our friends over at Inside Minnesota Politics point out Rep. Kline has also been a phony and hypocrite when it comes to veterans. There's a real pattern developing when we look at Kline's record: he always puts a narrow, partisan Republican agenda first.

COLEEN ROWLEY ENDORSES AL FRANKEN

In the last election cycle no one was a better choice among the non-politician citizens running for Congress than Coleen Rowley. The communities at Firedoglake, Crooks & Liars and Down With Tyranny that make up Blue America contributed over $22,000 in small donations to her first campaign to take a seat from right wing extremist John Kline. Kline spent a million and a half dollars to retain his suburban/exurban seat south of the Twin Cities and Coleen spent less than half that. Coleen was the original candidate for whom we did the "Have You Had Enough?" customized song and video and her live blog session at Firedoglake still stands as a classic in grassroots journalism.


I've been urging Coleen to run again next year. She pats me kindly on the head and laughs. Apparently she hasn't given up on politics entirely because this morning when I woke up she had written this endorsement of Al Franken for us:

AL FRANKEN-- THE REAL DEAL

by Coleen Rowley

I just checked off every volunteer activity from envelope stuffing to door knocking for Al Franken, who I hope will defeat one of the country's most consummate politicians (and also one of the country's most vulnerable Republicans), Norm Coleman, to become Minnesota's next U.S. Senator.

That means no matter how risqué or avant garde a comedy skit featuring Mr. Franken may surface in the next 20 or so months, he's going to keep my support. (That ethics-preaching, prudish FBI agent side of me who never much cared for "Saturday Night Live" will just have to look the other way.)

Now, you might suspect this early pledge of loyalty was won because Mr. Franken helped my own campaign for congress last year. But that isn't the reason. I do have a couple funny stories about his help last year, one involving a lesson in Yiddish pronunciation, which maybe I'll tell you about later. But Mr. Franken certainly did not have to move back to Minnesota and begin working as hard as he did, crisscrossing the state in the year prior to the 2006 election, on behalf of a whole bunch of us Democratic candidates for state and federal offices.

And it's not because Mr. Franken is one of the smartest Harvard graduates there is having availed himself of discussion these last few years on his daily Air America radio show of the most important issues facing the country with national leaders and policy experts.

It's not because he was often able to write and say things through clever use of humor that so many others couldn't or wouldn't say. I'll never forget stopping in my tracks in the doorway at Mystic Lake Casino (in Shakopee, Minnesota) the first time I heard Mr. Franken at the podium after a conference lunch in fall of 2005. I had not planned to stay for his talk and was trying to sneak out but stopped when I heard him start to sarcastically but accurately dissect the tangled e-mail trail of the Abramoff-Scanlon-Reed influence peddling that had defrauded certain Indian tribes. He was nailing the culture of corruption almost before anyone knew it was out there.

It's not because he has a good stump speech. Ya know the first thing they teach you in these political training exercises is you have to come up with some heartfelt personal story that ties in with why you are running. In the last couple years, I think I've heard them all and I've heard many (including Franken's) repeatedly. Politicos swear by these stump speeches but it's hard for them not to come off rehearsed and fakey-sounding. Mr. Franken's personal story is from the heart and rings as true as Paul Wellstone’s (whose seat is the one Franken happens to be seeking).

Finally, my support for Al Franken is certainly not because he's got the makings of a good politician. It's funny but the bulk of the press coverage these first few days of his candidacy have focused almost solely on how inexperienced a politician he is. Here's what I say. If you want political experience, just vote for Norm Coleman. Coleman has been running for one political office or another since his college days. He's even run in both parties, as both a Democrat and a Republican. Coleman's served as everything from mayor to senator with a try for governor in between. So if you want a politician with experience (as well as real bright white teeth), Norm would be your guy. My bet is Mr. Franken is not going to try to compete with Norm Coleman as a political animal. And no one wants him to.

Nope. It's not for any of these sophisticated reasons that I support Mr. Franken. I don't make snap judgments about anyone, much less anyone running for a political office. In fact, after all I was exposed to these last couple years, my cynicism antenna goes up even higher with those running for political office. But Al Franken has impressed me for all and none of the above reasons as the real deal. It's that simple. And with genuineness and authenticity in such short supply, I think it might be the only criteria that matters anymore. So any future ax murders notwithstanding, Al Franken will get not only my vote but all my envelope stuffing and door knocking too.

One piece of advice I got a chance to blurt out ahead of time to him was "don't lose your sense of humor." For if Al Franken, of all people, suddenly becomes all serious and boring and political, it would be nothing but a fakey makeover. He'd lose his authenticity. Plus there's no doubt he's going to need that good sense of humor to get through the next 20 some months.


PREDATE: BEST AL FRANKEN INTERVIEW TO DATE

The Minnesota Campaign Report published the ultimate Al Franken interview a few days ago that I've been meaning to recommend.