Back on February 12, we wrote in Anatomy of a smear: Jihad Watch blasts MN01 hopeful Nelson for economic development bill:
An article posted Sunday by Robert Spencer on the anti-Muslim site Jihad Watch targets Rochester state senator Carla Nelson for SF1722, a straight-to-committee bill introduced last March.
Minnesota State Senators want to spend $18,000,000 of taxpayer money on “Somali community development” is an Islamphobic fabulist construction that fails to note HF1946, the House companion bill or press coverage of the effort, going straight to the notion that the bill is an anti-terrorism effort and that Nelson, who is seeking the Republican endorsement for the open seat in Minnesota Congressional District 1, is the chief mover of the legislation.
Utter balderdash.
It's an economic development bill. The economic development bills (SF1722 and HF1946) were not heard in the House Job Growth and Energy Affordability Policy and Finance committee nor the Jobs and Economic Growth Finance and Policy, according to the Minnesota Legislature's website.
Abeler withdrew the bill on February 20, according to Minnesota Senate records, but that fact hasn't stopped folks from writing their local papers and demanding that readers "Email or call officials to stick to America’s founding principles."
It's curious how an attack on the fourth co-author of the bill (and a CD1 congressional candidate) in the national anti-Islam media has enjoyed such a long half-life, a glowing fester of confusion hanging on after the death of the actual bill.
Those who continued to agitate do this with one voice in small town newspapers, so Bluestem suspects this is a canned letter. It's the sort of thing that suggests the writers are more plugged into a fear machine than the legislative process. The first example was published online on March 22 (over a month after the bill was withdrawn) in the Isanti-Chisago County Star; Bonnie Illies of Cambridge writes in Letter to the editor: Somali grant program against founding principles:
Are Senators Jim Abeler, Carla Nelson and Jerry Relph, along with House members Nels Pierson and Tama Theis, trying to buy votes with an $18 million Somali Pilot Grant Program?
U.S. taxpayers already spend $110 billion annually on refugees according to Judicial Watch. These lawmakers are supporting a bill in the Senate (SF1722) and in the House of Representatives (HF1946) asking for $18 million for a Somali Pilot Grant Program.
Isn’t this program antithetical to our country’s founding? At its founding, Americans relied on themselves, not their government, for solutions to their problems and for ways to achieve their dreams. Limited government is what made our country great and free. Americans have never held up a specific ethnic group for special treatment or for extra tax dollars, nor have they engineered enclaves because those ideas were never part of our founding principles.
Email or call officials to stick to America’s founding principles.
Bonnie Illies
The next day, Nancy Judd had a nearly-identical letter, Tell officials to stick to principles published in the Morrison County Record:
Are Senators Jim Abeler, Carla Nelson and Jerry Relph, along with House members Nels Pierson and Tama Theis trying to buy votes with an $18 million Somali Pilot Grant Program?
U.S. taxpayers already spend $110 billion annually on refugees according to Judicial Watch. These lawmakers are supporting a bill in the Senate (SF1722) and in the House of Representatives (HF1946) asking for $18 million for a Somali Pilot Grant Program.
Isn’t this program antithetical to our country’s founding?
At its founding, Americans relied on themselves, not their government, for solutions to their problems and for ways to achieve their dreams. Limited government is what made our country great and free. Americans have never held up a specific ethnic group for special treatment or for extra tax dollars, nor have they engineered enclaves because those ideas were never part of our founding principles.
Let’s signal our elected officials to stick to America’s founding principles.
—Nancy Judd, Cushing/Browerville area
This is curious stuff:
Americans have never held up a specific ethnic group for special treatment or for extra tax dollars, nor have they engineered enclaves because those ideas were never part of our founding principles.
One need only look at the reservation system, Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation, or the presence of Japanese internment camps in World War II to see the weakness of the argument about no engineered enclaves.
And there's the Homestead Act, where folks picked up free land
But there's more. We didn't see these folks rising up about Minnesota's Equity Funding program, which was authorized by the legislature in 2016:
Minnesota nonprofit groups and organizations had an opportunity to apply for competitive grants to develop programs to improve economic opportunities for people of color, women, people with disabilities, veterans, and/or youth in Minnesota.
Governor Mark Dayton proposed $100 million to expand economic opportunities and eliminate workforce and educational barriers faced by some Minnesota demographic groups. DEED data show that racial and ethnic Minnesotans have higher unemployment rates, lower levels of education and lower annual wages than white Minnesotans. Women, young adults and people with disabilities experience similar barriers.
In 2016, the Minnesota Legislature approved $35 million for equity programs, which Governor Dayton signed into law (Laws of Minnesota 2016, Article 12).
List of Competitive Grant Recipients
There's that.
Screengrab: The status of SF1722 is withdrawn and returned to the author as of February 20, 2018. So what's making those objecting to a dead senate bill send letters to the editors of Greater Minnesota papers?
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