Dayton intimates funded Emmer DWI ad

The organization that paid for a controversial ad that takes Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer to task for two past DWI arrests was funded mostly by donations from the ex-wife and aunt of Democratic candidate Mark Dayton.

Dayton’s ex-wife, Alida Rockefeller Messinger, donated the $500,000 to Win Minnesota Political Action Committee (PAC) towards the end of May; Mary Lee Dayton, the candidate’s aunt, donated $250,000 to the PAC in April; other Daytons also contributed amounts ranging from $1,000 to $50,000, according to documents filed with the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.

The Win Minnesota PAC then funneled $900,000 to the Alliance for a Better Minnesota Action Fund, which put out the controversial Emmer ad this week and made large ad buys in mid-July. The Alliance is also funded by the 2010 Fund, which receives more labor unions like Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Education Minnesota and AFSCME, as well as smaller donations from Messinger.

Here are some of the filings:

Win Minnesota PAC

Alliance for a Better Minnesota Action Fund

2010 Fund

The Republican Party of Minnesota released a statement yesterday about this. Here's the video, which Emmer said is insulting.

Top Secret Minnesota: What Minnesota companies are part of the secret intelligence network?

The Washington Post is midway through a series on the huge network of intelligence operations that sprouted up after 9/11. Like much of the rest of our national security, the network is dominated by private contractors and packed with redundancies -- no one knows how many people are being employed or at what cost. Even top political and intelligence leaders don't know the scope of the operations.

The series is called Top Secret America. It took a dozen reporters two years to dig up all the info, much of it from anonymous sources. The Post reporters managed to find out what companies received contracts, although there's little information about what they do or how much government money they receive.

Minnesota companies according to the reporting's awesome data feature:

Link: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

Something to remember for media folks: Truth Seeking

The length of this quote prevents me from posting it on dumb, old Twitter. It's so nice though, and I wish political reporters would latch onto this as a mission that distinguishes us in the public mind from political hacks.

"If your job is to make the case, win the negotiations, decide what the community should do, or maintain morale, that is one kind of work. If your job is to tell people what’s going on, and equip them to participate without illusions, that is a very different kind of work. To put it a little more sharply, power-seeking and truth-seeking are different behaviors, and this is what creates the distinction between politics and journalism. The work of the journalist cannot be done without a commitment to the act of reporting, which means gathering information, talking to people who know, trying to verify and clarify what actually happened and to portray the range of views as they emerge from events."

--Jay Rosen

Always tell the voter what the voter wants to hear: Punk Iceland

So a Jello Biafra-sort was elected mayor of Reykjavik (in Iceland). His name is Jon Gnarr and he's a professional comedian known for playing a bald communist; the New York Times calls him Mr. Gnarr.

For a sub-species of attention-seeking punks, political campaigns have always been provocation catnip: Biafra, McLaren, Giuliani.

Biafra, for instance, satirized the way government works by proposing a Board of Bribery. But he also proposed that police be elected by local communities -- a reasonable idea that just isn't politically viable. The tendency is vaguely analogous to Antanas Mockus, the lovable wingnut who was crushed by the mainstream opponent in the Colombian presidential election (but he made a decent showing, considering the vote occurred while the World Cup was happening).

But Gnarr now finds himself in the position of being mayor while Biafra came in fourth place in America's most leftist city. Now Gnarr's got to convert all these satires (like building Disneyland at the airport) into political proposals that can allow him to govern in the wake of Iceland's huge financial catastrophe.

It will be interesting to see if Gnarr (now in charge of a city with one-fourth the population of Minneapolis) will be able to transcend satire and work with the remaining mainstream parties. At least he insists any political partners must watch The Wire first.

In the New York Times piece, which dwelled on eccentric beards and mini-dresses (probably the NY Times expects corsets and handlebar mustaches) Gnarr sounded optimistic, saying: “Of all the projects I’ve been involved with, this one has given me the most satisfaction, the greatest sense of contentment.”

In Minnesota, we've done the Jesse Ventura thing, now maybe we just need Paddy from Dillinger Four to run for governor. Or, that failing, The Strike could always be lured back.

Link: NY Times

Orwell's wartime diaries released

Still tied to the specters of the lost-cause Spanish Civil War, George Orwell kept an extensive wartime diary from England as the Axis swallowed up Europe in World War Two. He meant for the diary to be printed, but publishers were afraid it would offend people in the wake of that conflict.

But the Orwell Trust has released the diary in blog form at orwelldiaries.wordpress.com.

The diary gives some insight into some of Orwell's later work (you know which books I mean). It's important to remember that he was a socialist and unrepentant social critic, both of authoritarian communism and democratic capitalism (although a supporter of the war effort due to his experiences in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War).

Here's one about censorship: "In the middle of a fearful battle in which, I suppose, thousands of men are being killed every day, one has the impression that there is no news"

Propaganda: "Huge advert on the side of a bus: “FIRST AID IN WARTIME. FOR HEALTH, STRENGTH AND FORTITUDE. WRIGLEY’S CHEWING GUM.”

Gardens: "Still, not warm, overcast but no rain. Sowed kale, savoys, sprouts, lettuce (cos), radishes. (Not broccoli, as the seed I have is of a late kind, to be sowed about May-June). Also leeks, 10-week stocks, foxgloves. Planted out 1 score cos lettuce. (Paid 4^d). Don’t know whether they will survive – probably not if there is a sharp frost. Put awning of sacking over the plants. Applied a little fertiliser (Woolworths, 6^d) to the grass. Ground could now do with a spot of rain."