Archive for the ‘Oberstar’ Category

One toke over the line

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Extremists are always paid in kind. That bill has yet to be settled.

Meanwhile Jim Oberstar gets a boat named after him……..the name “Titanic” was already taken.

The Congressman for Malaysia

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

I first heard Congressman Oberstar’s latest cheapo TV ad a couple of days ago. It featured a tiny video of his oponant Chip Cravaack saying something about how Maylasia was a model of entrepreneural spirit. Then a snippet of a Cravaack saying, “like Malaysia” was played back three times in response to questions asked by the narrator but, of course, never heard by Craavack. I was in another room when I heard the voice over guy say “Chip Cravaack would be a good Congressman……….for Maylasia.” I laughed strenuously. It ranked right up there with Science Mystery Theater for a good laugh.

It was Jimmy’s first attack ad and its hard to say whether its cheesiness or its ineffectuality was more glaring. After a second viewing tonight I’m pretty sure it will drive a lot of undecideds to the Cravaack camp.

I felt) as far back as 1992 when I first ran against Oberstar that no one much loved him. The same was true when I ran against him in 2006. Its just as true today and Chip Cravaack has been a model candidate. Cravaack has done nothing sleazy in fact, his ads are a model of restraint. And tonight the Congressional GOP put on a blistering television ad scorching Oberstar. It was effective.

Up until a few days ago I was telling folks that while Oberstar won’t get his usual minimum 59% of the vote but that he should still pull through. Had he gotten the national Democrats to help him early he could have saved himself. Instead he had someone produce a rinky dink ad that does him no credit. I think its too late for Oberstar. I’m not eager for the GOP to take over Congress but it will be nice to demonstrate that I was correct all along about Oberstar being a paper tiger. This Congressional District will never be the same again…….if it even manages to survive reapportionment.

Oberstar named “Porker of the month”

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

With the Minneapolis Bridge collapse on everybody’s mind its a good time to think about Jim Oberstar’s spending priorities.

Paying attention to the new Chairman

Monday, January 15th, 2007

Right after his reelection I got far more google alerts about breaking news on Jim Oberstar than before. That’s because he was likely to become and is now the new Chairman of the House transoportation committee.

There is also little doubt that he will excercise his clout and do it far differently than Dan Young the Republican who previously chaired this committee. Oberstar is definitely one of the most knowledgable Congressmen on all the transportation issues and that’s what the jump in news stories about him demonstrated.

I’ve been so busy researching the 1974 campaign that got Jim elected that I haven’t taken time to keep this blog up-to-date. But the story in today’s Minneapolis paper couldn’t have happened if the story I’m working on hadn’t happened first.

Fun with paranoia

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

Last night I was up till midnight again reading Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate. What a great book! Oh, I’m sorry. I think I’ve said that before.

Before going to bed I googled Billie Sol Estes and came up with a JFK assassination website which had lots of interesting information in it. I sent the site’s author an email inquiring about a mysterious news story I’d read in the late 1980′s about a man who had just claimed on his death bed that Lyndon Johnson had ordered another man’s murder. (Not JFK but someone else who was in a position to blackmail the President about his personal corruption)

Having just read Caro’s book the story seemed considerably more credible but my newspaper never followed the accusation up. This was in the days before the Internet or Google so the story just receded from view. Then last night after finding the site (one of many such JFK sites) I sent an inquiry about that mysterious old news story (along with a link to my web page about the Boyd Scandal) to the website’s author.

He wrote back this morning and said he would post my question on his site. He also invited me to send him a biography which he also offered to post for people who might have information about my research.

Here’s the email I just sent him.

Thank you John,  After I sent you the email I realized that I probably saw the news story shortly after reading Robert Caro’s first book in 1984 or 85. The news story must have come out between 1985 and 1990. Caro’s book so impressed me with LBJ’s mania to be President and his ties to Brown and Root that it enhanced the credibility of the death bed confession I’m trying to locate. It was such a potent accusation – US Senator/President orders the murder of a political threat – that I could never understand why it was never followed up by our newspaper. I am a JFK conspiracy skeptic but I am open to serious research about the interesting little dust bunnies that history tried to sweep under the rug after JFK was murdered. Coincidentally, conspiracy enthusiast, Jim Fetzer, is a neighbor of mine but I’m non-plussed by his theory that Paul Wellstone’s charter plane was brought down by an electromagnetic pulse. In my opinion Fetzer’s work mostly serves to discredit other assassination researchers. I’m a local eccentric in Duluth, Minnesota. I’m an ex-liberal Republican (I’m still a liberal) who has failed to establish much of a political presence in our very Democratic oriented part of Blue State, Minnesota. I’m best known in town for my winter snow sculptures. I was a history teacher and served on the Duluth school board for eight years. I run for office promiscuously. I just ran a Quixotic race for Congress. It was my 12th campaign but my 5,508 votes were about 150,000 votes short of a victory.  I was a columnist for our local tabloid the Reader Weekly and my columns and other miscellaneous stuff can be found with a little poking around on my Internet closet: www.snowbizz.com. I also blog every so often at www.lincolndemocrat.org Six months ago an interesting lead from another JFK website wetted my appetite to dig deeper into the 1973 Boyd Scandal which is closely tied to HHH. The new lead involved yet another long forgotten Minnesota scandal from a decade earlier, 1963-64, that threatened my Father’s pension. My father was particularly chagrinned about this at the time because he had been a fraud investigator for the Kansas State Insurance Commission prior to moving us to Minnesota. This time period coincided with LBJ protégé, HHH’s, move from the Senate to the Vice Presidency when money would have been at a premium for the 64 presidential campaign.   This earlier scandal involved a failed Minnesota insurance company (like the kind my Dad used to investigate) which managed Minnesota‘s state pensions. One of the company’s leaders threatened to expose the state’s Democratic party to charges of corruption (he never did) while another executive who was sent to prison later claimed to have information about the Kennedy Assassination. I don’t know where my research is headed but it is an interesting little cul de sac.   Feel free to use this email as my biography.   Harry Welty   

 

Oberstar’s transportation agenda

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006

In an interview with the New Chairman of the transportation committee Jim outlines his priorities.

Is Oberstar a threat to space tourism?

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006

Well is he?

Millionaires Club

Sunday, November 5th, 2006

Jim Oberstar is just behind Mark Dayton in personal wealth among Minnesota’s delegation to Congress. So says the Star Tribunes Dispatches.

“Among Minnesotans, Dayton led the pack, with a minimum net worth of $4.4 million, ranking No. 22 among senators. Oberstar had a minimum net worth of $3.5 million, ranking 43rd among House members. And Ramstad reported a minimum net worth of $2.47 million, ranking 66th among House members.”

Tom Friedman’s call to vote for Democrats

Saturday, November 4th, 2006

I haven’t yet been able to find Tom Friedman’s entire column today but I found significant passages of it here. Its been getting rave reviews and if what was sampled in the Moderate Voice is any indication it is indeed.

Oh, and I’d suggest voting for at least one Independent candidate who never pandered to the far right  (watch my ad) to get porkbarrel projects.

Millionaire candidates

Saturday, November 4th, 2006

Here’s an interesting MSNBC News story on the limp record of millionaire candidates.

“the record of candidates who have poured $5 million or more of their own money into a race might be seen as “pathetic,” argues Jennifer Steen, an expert on self-funding candidates at Boston College.

Their election rate is only 37.5%, compared with 63.9% for candidates who raised at least $5 million for their campaigns, according to Steen’s analysis of elections from 1984 to 2004.”

Minnesota’s retiring millionaire Senator, Mark Dayton, succeeded in defeating Rod Grams six years ago. Doesn’t say much for Grams.

Grams campaign bankrupt in more ways than one

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

If the Democrats are right Rod Grams is out of money and out of steam. They report that he only has about $15,000 on hand which I must admit is $5,000 more than I’ll have spent in total.

I haven’t seen the flyer the Democrats are disparaging but it was obviously Rod’s last gasp. A letter to the Duluth News Tribune from my chimney Sweep, Jim Suttie, sums up its vote-getting potential for the Grams campaign.

“We recently received in the mail a political advertisement for the Rod Grams for Congress campaign. Up until that point, I had considered voting for Grams. Now, there is no way I would do so.

The flyer is composed to appear as a wanted poster. The heading states “Serial Job Killer Stalks Northern Minnesota.” Inside there is a mug shot of Jim Oberstar, as if taken in a police line-up. Beneath that there is an alias, “Big Shooter.” Oberstar is depicted as a common criminal.

If Grams authorized this, I think it’s way over the top and it’s despicable. Even if the charges leveled in this ad were true, and even if Grams doesn’t agree with the policies and actions taken by Oberstar over the years, he deserves more respect than what is shown him in this ad.

I hope that the voters of northern Minnesota show their displeasure at receiving such garbage by ultimately not voting for Grams for Congress or to hold any position of power. It’s this type of campaigning that gives such a negative impression of politicians to potential voters and that may contribute to low voter turnout.

If Grams hoped to get my attention, he did that. If he hoped to capture my vote, he failed miserably.”

 

I’m as bad as John Kerry

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

Vic is on my case. He made me reread the story I poked fun at a couple posts ago.

I was railing at Oberstar for promising to spend 3.5 billion on bicycle storage for airports. Well, I’m clearly wrong. Jim is only planning on allowing airports to use some of the 3.5 billion available to them for bicycle storage not the whole enchillada.

I should clearly be out on the hustings putting my foot in my mouth in front of television cameras rather than doing it on my blog.

2 percent

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

I’ve been torn between keeping this blog a reasonably faithful diary of my political campaign and a vehicle to promote my campaign. I’ve always stuck in newsy things that involved any of the three candidates such as the previous post on Jim Oberstar’s plans to spend billions on bicycle racks at airports. In recent months more of those things have been posted while I’ve put fewer posts about issues in the blog. I just haven’t had time to read longer issue oriented stories to write blog posts about.
One consequence of this seems to be that the blog has taken on a more negative tone. For isnstance, I haven’t been putting in the “hoots” of funny tidbits which were one of Lincolndemocrat’s staples.
Another consequence has been the temptation to edit out anything that cast a negative light on my prospects. Now that the election in six days off and I’ve been making post-election plans that don’t involve reforming Congress I think I can safely let down my hair a bit. There will be about 300,000 voters in this election and I only expect about a thousand more visitors to the blog in the next week. That’s just a fraction of the people who will see the television spots from my impoverished ad buy.
A year ago I was thinking about challenging Mark Kennedy as a Republican. Nine months ago I was imagining challenging Jim Oberstar as a Democrat. Six months ago I imagined giving being an independent a try once more just as I had in 1992. I figured the Republicans would trot out their usual lamb to the slaughter and that Jim Oberstar’s stale 32 years in Congress would overstay its welcome. That was before the public had made up its mind to make this election a referendum on the Republican Party.
When Rod Grams entered the race that changed part of the formula because an ex-US Senator should have been formidable. Had this been any other year Grams might well have been able to put up a stiff campaign rather than the desperate and dimwitted campaign he has managed.
I just didn’t rise to the occasion. In retrospect I realize I put too much time blogging and creating a website without having the tools or imagination to draw enough people to it. After spending two exhilarating weeks getting signatures person to person on my nomination petition I stopped relying on the personal touch.
I also stopped trying to raise money for television after my first major fund raising letter which cost over a thousand dollars and many man hours resulted in a hundred dollars worth of donations. That disappointment drove me back to the computer, the blog, and the website.
Last night I got a pretty good picture of what to expect from all my online activity from a poll that KBJR Television reported. The station only polled people in six counties of the twenty or so in the district but I presume they are a reasonably good predictor. According to their poll I’m stand at 2%. Grams has 20% and Oberstar has 63%. Undecideds comprise 13%. It’s a little early for a post mortem but I can’t help myself.
I might yet pull a disproportionate share of the undecided votes remaining but it looks to me like I’ll have to be lucky to get 5% of the vote. Grams should do better in the counties that were not surveyed. Perhaps he’ll pull 40% to the west and the south which comprise about half the voters. That would give him close to 30%. Oberstar will likely get something close to his regular 65% vote. That leaves me with 5%.(If I’m lucky)
I thought this year would be a referendum on both parties but its clear that it is now a referendum on Republicans only. My television ad showing Jim to have been an accomplice of Tom Delay was meant to blunt this but my ad buy was so anemic that its probably not having the effect I’d hoped for. In the past four days I’ve had two people comment that they’ve seen the ad once. I needed another $20,000 bucks of ad time just to cover the eastern half of the district adequately and there are no ads being run in the west or south.

At least I know the floor for my campaign. Any percentage points I receive over 2% will be gravy.

Man loses bicycle at Airport….

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

…and it costs taxpayers 3.5 billion dollars.

You can’t make this stuff up. That’s OK we’ll just add it to the debt and make our kids pay for it. Heartwarming! Thanks Jim Oberstar.

 

 

Tantamount to a different voice

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

My braying about being ignored by the Tribune at the the televised debate they sponsored has borne some modest fruit.

First they gave me space to explain why I would be the best candidate. I’ve had a number of folks say my comments were the most sensible.

Then the editorial board gave me an interview, and today they assessed all the candidates in their endorsement of Jim Oberstar. They had only nice things to say about me as a “different voice.”

I can’t complain.

Harry Welty

Harry Welty had run for office numerous times before finally winning a seat on the Duluth School Board. During his service there from 1995 to 2003, he received praise as a moderate who could get things done.

A writer and former teacher, Welty describes himself as a 35-year moderate Republican who would caucus with the Democratic Party if elected to Congress. He offers realistic and sobering ideas on the war in Iraq and the economy, harkening back to the Republicanism of years past for whom fiscal conservatism was tantamount while allowing for social caring.

Welty’s quest is hampered, however, by his peculiar route to the ballot, in which he sought but could not obtain an Independence Party endorsement and discovered instead the Unity Party, a more-or-less online creation based in California. His motivations, nonetheless, appear sincere and he brings a different voice to the race.”

And Big Business is plying Oberstar with money

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

According to the Hill Jim Oberstar has been raking in contributions from big business. I had read in other news reports that he had stayed around in Washington DC near the adjournment of Congress busily attending fund raisers. Bad news for Republicans have made business interests very generous to prospective Democratic committee chairman.

“Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has raised $225,000 for his campaign account from PACs between July 1 and Oct. 18, drawing donations from PACs belonging to business giants such as CSX Corporation and 3M. That amount is nearly $70,000 more than he raised from such sources during a similar stretch in 2004. But during the recent three-and-a-half month period, a $1,000 contribution to Mike Erlandson was the only money he gave to a Democratic House candidate, fundraising records show.”

Grams should quit, say the unions

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Tonight there was a silly bit of news about area labor unions which are calling on Rod Grams to quit the race for Congress.

Sure, Rod’s campaign has been drivel – complaints about trips to Paris and Jim’s home in Maryland. Rod’s recent story in the Trib about the poor farmers who were jailed for draining their swamp was patently absurd and slanted, but should he quit the race?

The unions are upset that Rod is trying to make the claim that Jim Oberstar has been a job killer. So what? Its just over the top campaign rhetoric. The public won’t be impressed.

I tried explaining while on Duluth Solutions today that economic development was more of a state matter than a fedral matter but my friend Mel has a much better take on a congressman’s limitations than I managed. Neither Oberstar, Grams or Welty can be expected to bring jobs, jobs, jobs to the Eighth District’s economy.l

First Ad gets an OK

Monday, October 30th, 2006

Claudia hadn’t seen my TV ad until this afternoon. We were fixing dinner in the Kitchen when she said “Harry Look!” My TV ad had just popped up on the ABC Sunday night news with its picture of Oberstar’s “working” lawnsign. The ad continued on with the Republican rogue’s gallery that Jim pandered to and finished up with the head shot of me promising to work hard. My wife said it was good which for her was high praise.

My ad was immediately followed by a brand new Oberstar ad touting how hard Jim works in the Congress. We both enjoyed the juxtoposition of my ad lambasting Jim’s work companions and his ad exulting in his hard work. It sure would be nice to buy a couple thousand dollars more ad time.

He’ll be back

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

According to this blog Rod Grams plans on running again two years from now should he lose this year.

Miner Praise

Saturday, October 28th, 2006

I picked up the latest Reader Weekly today after swimming 2000 meters to check on my latest ad. The lastest ad directs people to my TV ad which shines a spotlight on Congressman Oberstar’s collusion with Tom Delay. To my absolute delight (since I haven’t bothered organizing a pro-Welty letter-writing campaign) there was one unsolicited endorsement letter from a Paul Miner. Mr. Miner shared his reasons for losing faith in Jim Oberstar

1. Oberstar’s opposition to the changes in the Medicare Part D program and

2. Jim’s pandering to Tom Delay Republicans over Terri’s Law. Then concluded his tome with the line:

“If you are a cynic who says your vote won’t count, remember that if you don’t vote, it certainly won’t be counted. Go Harry Welty!”

Music to my ears.