Yesterday, in Scary MN: Draz gets a polite letter from EQB chair & MN Ag Commissioner Dave Frederickson (and Ellen Anderson), Bluestem suggested that conservative Republican grumblings about the Citizen Forums and 2013 Minnesota Environmental Congress are a dogwhistle for anti-Agenda 21 paranoia.
For Representative-elect Jim Newberger at the Central Minnesota Tea Party Blog, it's no dogwhistle, but a full-throated tornado siren shrieking across the prairie and Granite City quarries. In Agenda 21 Coming to St. Cloud!, he writes:
It is time to act. The Environmental Quality Board is organizing an Agenda 21-style "congress” for Minnesota. I have received reports from folks who have attended the Rochester and Bloomington “congresses”. This is a huge move by the state to force a “Green Agenda”.
We have an opportunity to attend, to vote, and to speak at these events. The Liberals have been stuffing these rooms FULL. I was told there were 160 at the Rochester event! I was also informed that the majority of these people were government union people, or staff members from one of the MANY agencies behind this “congress”.
St. Cloud is Central Minnesota. This is OUR home turf. We need to be there. If we pull together: Liberty folks, TEA Party folks, Republicans and Conservatives then we CAN make an impact. We must stand together!
GET YOUR PEOPLE to the St. Cloud event. I will be there.
I will also be having an organizational meeting BEFORE this takes place so we are united and can work as a team. Stay tuned. Details to come.
God’s peace,
Jim Newberger
763.482.9486
Since Newberger hasn't been sworn into office yet, we suspect open meeting laws don't apply. Will his pre-Citizen Forum organizational meeting for his kindred spirits be open to the public and the press?
Newberger's post echoes the nonsense that first saw the light of day in a post-Thanksgiving email sent out by state representative Steve Drazkowski (R-ALEC). It was picked up by a couple of the Group Home bloggers at True North and the Rochester Tea Party Patriots, and the emotional flooding of fear continued.
The basic outline of the narrative is that these is an attempt at takeover by environmental extremists led by the evil (and rich) Alida Messinger (subtext: Or Agenda 21! The United Nations! Scary!). To execute this infernal plot, only environmentalists and other dirty hippies have been invited or so implied Steve Drazkowski in a scary email about extremists hijacking EQB citizen forums.
What's more, so goes this fabulist narrative, the congress and the citizen forums were hatched after the Republicans lost their majorities in November (possible only if Messinger is funding time travel, since Environmental Congress is a product of a November 2011 executive order signed while the Republicans still held both chambers of the Minnesota legislature--and when no one predicted that the MNGOP would lose both the house and senate).
That the Environmental Quality Board, a tiny agency staffed by two people and composed of commissioners from such unlikely bastions of eco-terrorism like the Departments of Commerce, Transportation, Administration, Natural Resources, and Agriculture, as well as citizen members from groups like the AgriGrowth Council, is the vehicle for a sneaky socialist takeover of property and liberty, is more than ludicious.
It's completely cray.
Indeed, complete bullshit like this gives the cray a bad name, and perhaps it's time for Minnesotans to start taking about Republican overreach after their defeat in last month's state legislative elections. Those hoping that the Republican Party of Minnesota will get its feet firmly planted back on the ground need only look to new reps like Cindy Pugh and Newberger (and others) to realize that the MNGOP overreach isn't going away.
Facts: The Environmental Congress was first ordered in November 2011, and the forums have been promoted to a wide range of groups, from state and local chambers of commerce, the AgriGrowth Council to environmental organizations. News releases have been sent to local papers and trade publications. Bluestem wrote about this outreach in Scary MN: Draz gets a polite letter from EQB chair & MN Ag Commissioner Dave Frederickson, in Scary MN: EQB Czar Dave Frederickson talked up Enviro Congress to Dairy Star in Nov. 2011, in Drazmania: more evidence emerges of Dayton admin pitching citizens forums to farmers and in Scary MN: John Rouleau sees first DFL 2012 victory overreach in order issued Nov. 16.....2011.
Once more: the letter Frederickson and Anderson sent to The Draz (perhaps representative-elect Newberger needs to get an epistle of his own):
12 3 12 Letter to Rep Drazkowski Re Citizen Forums Outreach
Who is Jim Newberger? There's a short profile here in PIM, and a longer feature in the St. Cloud Times by Mark Sommerhauser, Faith and family guide Newberger in politics, government. Sommerhauser writes:
State Rep.-elect Jim Newberger has made eight mission trips beyond the former Iron Curtain.Newberger has visited Russia, Ukraine and Romania as a volunteer with church-based and other groups. Seeing the state of affairs in formerly Communist nations galvanized Newberger’s beliefs about government and human nature.
“Ronald Reagan said that when the government gets bigger, people get smaller. You see that in the former Soviet Union everywhere,” Newberger said. “I’ve seen the aftermath of big government, and it takes generations to fix.”
Newberger, a paramedic and tea party activist from Becker, was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives on Nov. 6. He’ll represent District 15B, a rural district that covers much of Benton and Sherburne counties, including Becker, Clear Lake, Clearwater, Foley, Gilman and Rice. There was no incumbent in the district because of this year’s redistricting.
Newberger is an evangelical Christian who cites his faith and family as cornerstones of his beliefs about politics and government.
Read the rest at the St. Cloud Times. Like Cindy Pugh, Newberger appears to be totally heaven-sent for bloggers.
Photo: Jim Newberger, from his website.
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