While MDE has always been the site of “let’s throw this mostly-inaccurate-spin out there and see if it sticks with the media,” things keep getting worse and worse. It’s now flat-out lies from MDE, most from Luke Hellier, and it’s widely documented. By the way, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the site they’re linking to today goes to a parody site of the Communist Party, not the official site.

MDE was incredibly effective for the GOP with Michael Brodkorb at the helm as he’s incredibly media savvy and disgustingly manipulative. Brodkorb was able to use MDE to get the media and the public to believe things that weren’t true and have that spin reported. Now I don’t know if MDE is more of a joke than a failure.

The Minnesota GOP has been shopping around the lie that Mark Ritchie was Al Franken’s “guest” at the State of the Union last night. Of course, it’s completely false. That doesn’t stop Luke Hellier, however:

He links to this piece with the Politico which says:

Shameless. Yet another shining example of how the Minnesota GOP tries to create “news.”

Update: David Brauer digs deeper and gets this quote from Politico:

We received an anonymous tip re: Ritchie and due to a communication breakdown, this was incorrectly reported. I thought the error had been removed from all story references on the site. We are issuing a correction in the story the item appears.

So Politico screws up because someone lied to them and didn’t get the record straight from who they named as their source. Mark Ritchie wasn’t even at the SotU. Very interesting how quickly the MN GOP jumped on the story right between the time it got posted and got corrected. This story is bigger than a misquote: it sure seems like the MN GOP was fishing to get this story published with a lie.

Lately, however, Kohler has been writing a lot about the MN GOP and their unofficially associated whisper site, Minnesota Democrats Exposed. Here’s a few posts if you need to be caught up:

Luke Hellier: Minnesota Democrats Exposed Exposed
Marty Seifert Puts Taxpayer Funded Arts Ahead of Cops
Ben Golnik Tweets About Getting Out of Minneapolis – from Minneapolis
Aaron Cocking’s Twitter Echo Chamber Contributions
MinnesotaDemocratsExposed.com Dropped from Google
Some Perspective on MN GOP’s Issue with R.T. Rybak

A lot of it is great research and solid work in catching liars red-handed. I caught up with Kohler recently and he agreed for a quick interview. In full disclosure, Kohler is a neighbor of mine and is someone I have a drink with now and then.

MNpublius: Looking back, your blog hasn’t been very political. Why are you getting into politics?

Ed Kohler: My blog started as a political blog, but I lost interest in politics as a theme over time and surely will again. Lately, my inspiration actually came from Newsbobber.com. Out of curiosity, I visited every blog in the Newsbobber 100 list of top-100 Minnesota blogs which reintroduced me to some new blogs and blogs I haven’t visited in quite a while. Some right-wing blogs that were particularly over the top with misleading statements inspired me to correct the record with links to accurate data.

MNp: Some of your recent posts sound very pro-R.T. Rybak. Do you support his run for governor? Do you volunteer or donate to his campaign?

EK: I’ve been a Minneapolis resident since 2000 with the exception of one year in St. Louis Park, and wouldn’t live in the city of I didn’t think it was the right place for me. I’m proud of the city and was ticked off to see Luke Hellier at Minneapolis Democrats Exposed misrepresenting the city’s crime data in an attempt to attack Rybak. I’m more pro-Minneapolis than I am pro-Rybak, so seeing Hellier mislead people about the state of crime in the city pissed me off. I’m not very politically involved day to day, so haven’t had a chance to give each candidate a serious look yet, so I can’t say for sure whether Rybak is my candidate of choice. Perhaps I should go with Tom Emmer since we were both athletes at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks? Well, that may be one of the only things we have in common. To be clear, I have not volunteered or donated to Rybak’s campaign and my opinions are definitely my own.

MNp: Who’s paying you to do all of this research?

EK: Research, for this sort of thing, means “searching for stuff on Google and Twitter” which takes a few minutes and costs me nothing. I write about topics that interest me, and for around a week, that’s been misleading statements regarding the City of Minneapolis along with follow-up posts based on feedback I received to earlier posts. I’m not sure why, but I care about my city. One example of this can be found at a database I’m setting up at minneapoliscrime.dabbledb.com where I’m aggregating the city’s crime stats into something more usable than Excel or PDF files so I can see trends in the data. That’s something I’ve been doing over the past couple months out of curiosity. I do run ads on my website, so profit from having an audience, but none of the are tied to politics unless Google AdSense decides that they should be.

MNp: So you’re not being compensated by any campaign or a political party for any of this?

EK: No. And there is a good chance I’ll grow tired of this subject and get back to blogging about yellow pages, hotel toilet paper folding, and running the streets of Minneapolis very soon.

MNp: Do you think that sites like Minnesota Democrats Exposed should be able to continue posting the lies and untruths that you’ve exposed, even after you’ve proven they’re lying?

EK: When I look at sites like Minnesota Democrats Exposed, I have to assume that their goal is to feed dirt on their opponents to the media. However, for that to work, they need to be trusted by the media. Looking at the stuff they’re churning out lately, it’s largely reblogs of things in the media rather than breaking news, or talking points based on misleading information. The media isn’t going to bite at stuff like that and will get turned off over time. Do they have a right to post whatever they want? Of course. But they’re going to have a hard time getting anyone in a position of influence to listen if they don’t keep it credible.

MNp: With governments becoming more open and accessible with public data and records, do you think many other non-politicos will be exposing political lies of this nature? Historically in Minnesota it has been fairly limited to the mainstream press, independent political media and political bloggers.

EK: I think bloggers who have a passion for a topic and can explain the intricacies of a topic in interesting ways can have a lot of influence. That can be people who are passionate about Park Board issues, crime, transportation, etc. Much of this sort of thing can percolate up through the mainstream press to reach larger audiences if the bloggers build a solid reputation for themselves. A blogger that’s passionate about a topic will have way more subject knowledge than a reporter doing an occasional story.

MNp: Have any recommendations for the people you’ve gone after in your posts?

EK: While I don’t expect to agree with the conclusions reached by people at the far end of any political spectrum, great arguments rely upon an agreed upon set of facts. Bloggers who mislead about the data automatically lose the argument since they’re not standing on a solid foundation. Get the facts right, cite your sources, and link to those sources so people can verify for themselves whether what you’re saying makes sense or not. Play hard, but play with the facts or expect to get blog-punched by those who find lying offensive.

MNp: Thanks for your time, I hope you don’t lose interest in fact-checking political bloggers.

EK: I hope that I can.

Ed Kohler writes The Deets.

Marty Seifert opened two hours of discussion with our Prager group with a short dissertation on his passion for our country. He continued to speak and respond to our questions without once referring to a note—a refreshing change from our dear leader and his ever-present teleprompter.

Great! Passion! That’ll help! Here’s my favorite part:

5. How to convince young adults. Several college students came to Seifert’s office with a plea for renewable energy. After an object lesson where he asked the students to give up their cell phones, computers, and other fun items, the kids saw the light!

Heh. Seifert’s version of “renewable energy”: give up using energy, experience enlightenment. Amazing.

[Chris] Coleman’s mayoral opponent, Eva Ng, is calling on Coleman to explain why his campaign committee is spending money on airline tickets, restaurants and hotels outside the city of St. Paul.

Included is a report showing Chris Coleman’s expenditures to the Young Democrats of America Convention, the Minnesota Building Trades Convention and the State Convention of the Minnesota Association of Justice. Stuff, that, um, high profile candidates do — regardless if they’re running for governor or not. Does anyone think Norm Coleman or Al Franken raised any money from outside the state? What about Tim Pawlenty? Think R.T. Rybak does anything outside the city limits of Minneapolis? Either way, is this really all Eva Ng has on Chris Coleman?

Here’s the kicker though: As reported by MPR’s Tom Scheck, Ms. Eva Ng is holding a fundraiser tonight in Inver Grove Heights. Which, by the way, is a city that is not Saint Paul.

Another kicker: It’s being held at a Baja Sol of all places. Why fast food for a fundraiser? Tony Sutton, MN GOP Chair is also the CEO of Baja Sol. (Couldn’t they have picked a Chair that was wasn’t the CEO of a fast food chain?)

Check out this juxtaposition of the latest two Twitter messages from the Minnesota GOP. Real smart work, guys.

Update: Dusty Trice relays the same reporting from MPR with his own take. LOL.

Photo: Matt Schmoeckel, Flickr

From the Regulations on the Use of the Congressional Frank by Members of the House of Representatives, Rule XLVI, 4:

A Member may not send any mass mailing outside the congressional district from which the Member was elected.

Considering Bachmann has an unusually high number of staffers dedicated to media, why is it that her press office is guilty of repeated violations of misusing taxpayer dollars and the congressional frank?

Anyway, why hasn’t anyone asked about the “politicization” of our classrooms from Tim Pawlenty’s office? Someone very close to him happens to be dropping in at our schools:

The first lady frequently visits elementary schools to teach students about our system of democracy. The first lady focuses on expanding school children’s knowledge and understanding of the three branches of government, providing a special emphasis on the judiciary.

Under Pawlenty’s logic, shouldn’t he be ashamed that the taxpayers of Minnesota are footing the bill this continued “politicization” of our classrooms?

MINNESOTA BLOGGERS FILE ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST REP. MICHELE BACHMANN FOR PARTISAN USE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS

ST. PAUL, MINN – Jul. 29, 2009 – Minnesota bloggers Dusty Trice, Brian Falldin, and Aaron Landry filed an ethics complaint with the House Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) requesting an investigation into whether Rep. Michele Bachmann’s office has violated House franking rules pertaining to proper e-mail usage.

The complaint points out that an e-mail sent by Representative Bachmann’s office on May 26, 2009, advocates for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), a political organization, which is in violation of the House Franking Rules.

Aaron Landry, who first began investigating the story said, “Michele Bachmann is no stranger to NADA, they’ve been a strong donor to her congressional campaign committee.” According to campaignmoney.com, Rep. Bachmann has received approximately $13,000 from NADA since 2006. Thus, Rep. Bachmann’s ties to the organization establish a potential quid-pro-quo scenario.

Brian Falldin, who began looking into filing the ethics complaint said: “While Michele Bachmann tends to moonlight on national news shows, she apparently spends little time following the rules of the road while at her day job, which is unfortunate for the 6th District and America.”

Dusty Trice, who is well known in Democratic circles for his firebrand commentary, stated: “It’s clear that Michele Bachmann cares about one thing – and that’s making sure she rewards those who give her the most money, regardless of the rules she needs to break in the process.”

Aaron Landry summed up the reasons for filing the complaint best: “There’s a reason why ethics rules exist: to keep our representatives ethical. I believe the Office of Congressional Ethics will continue to protect the taxpayers of Minnesota against the kind of activity Representative Bachmann’s office participates in.”

Dusty Trice, Brian Falldin, and Aaron Landry are well-known writers in the Minnesota political community. For more information or press inquiries, please visit www.dustytrice.com, www.brianfalldin.com, www.s4xton.com or call 612-234-5614.

# # #

As she has three people in communications, at least one should really brush up on the Rules of the House of Representatives, read the “Involvement With Outside Activities and Entities” section from the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, browse the “Red Book,” or what’s otherwise known as the Regulations on the Use of the Congressional Frank by Members of the House of Representatives and lastly read the Member’s Handbook from the Committee on House Administration. If they read just one of those documents, they would have realized they’ve been making some huge errors — some of which may put Michele Bachmann in trouble.

1. Bachmann is helping and endorsing outside organizations using taxpayer communications. Here’s an excerpt from an email from Bachmann.Bulletin@mail.house.gov, Tue, May 26, 2009, sent to constituents:

My staff and I have been in close contact with the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which represents auto dealers’ interests in Washington.  NADA has hired a firm to represent the legal interests of those auto dealers that have been chosen by the Task Force to close.  Any such auto dealer should call 703-821-7000 for more information.

Michele Bachmann’s office violated House Franking Rules by using taxpayer resources to tell constituents to call the National Automobile Dealer’s Association. House offices can’t even encourage people to donate blood, let alone ask them to call a national organization to get legal representation. Unsurprisingly, Bachmann has received $13,000 from that very same organization in 2006 and 2008.

Regulations on the use of the Congressional Frank prohibits the helping or endorsing an outside organization with official communications (see the bottom of page 16).

2. Bachmann is improperly linking from her federally-funded house.gov site to the highly-partisan Townhall.com.

It’s taxpayer dollars pushing people to a right-wing propaganda portal run by the Salem Web Network. It is deceptive as it is integrated as part of the navigation of the page and with the use of the RSS icon — a symbol used to indicate a feed related to the page you’re currently on.

3. Bachmann’s house.gov site deceives visitors when they are leaving the official government website and entering a third-party site. From the Committee on House Administration, a House website will:

…display an exit notice stating that users are leaving the House of Representatives prior to linking to a non-House of Representatives Web site. The exit notice will include a disclaimer that neither Members nor the House are responsible for the content of linked sites. Member offices maintaining their sites on the Public web server are required to incorporate the exit notice into their external links.

Sure, it’s legal for Bachmann to have a blog on a partisan site but she is not allowed to seamlessly integrate it with her non-campaign, taxpayer-funded site. Especially for constituents that are less familiar with the Internet, this is incredibly dishonest and misleading for them.

From the Committee on House Administration’s rule on this as of October 2008:

The official content of any material posted by the Member on any Web site must be in compliance with Federal law and House Rules and Regulations applicable to official communications and germane to the conduct of the Member’s official and representational duties.

When a link to a Web site outside the Member’s official cite is imbedded on the Member’s official site, the Member’s site must include an exit notice advising the visitor when they are leaving the House. This exit notice must also include a disclaimer that neither the Member nor the House is responsible for the content of the linked site(s).

This is extremely important, and easy for their webmaster to implement (see page 113). So why did they not do this? One thing is certain: it diminishes the line between what is government, taxpayer-funded and what in this case, is incredibly partisan and certainly not government-sponsored.

(Note to SEO nerds: in addition, do you know what kind of impact you get when you’re direct linked from a dot gov? Yeah. Uh hum.)

Maybe handling situations like this is why she has three press people.