MN-08: Rep. Stauber supports ripping off military families for Trump's wall

From a few days ago.

Congressman Pete Stauber might have appeared caught in the middle of national reporting last week that the White House was canceling $3.6 billion in military projects in favor of spending on the border wall with Mexico.

Married to a former command chief of the 148th Fighter Wing in Duluth, Stauber has been an avowed supporter of the military. But he was unequivocal in his approval of the diversion of military funds for the border wall in a conversation Sunday with the News Tribune.

"At West Point in New York there's $65 million intended for a new parking lot — it's now being prioritized to secure the southern border," Stauber, R-Hermantown, said. "I think that parking lot can wait. We have a crisis on our southern border." - Duluth NewsTribune

It's not about parking lots, Congressman. Get your shit together.

A number of schools and daycares that serve military families in the United States and abroad will be forced to forgo much-needed renovation and expansion to pay for the wall President Trump is determined to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Pentagon released a list this week of more than 127 Defense Department projects canceled due to the reallocation of $3.6 billion to Trump’s wall. Nearly $572 million was slated for school and daycare construction projects on military bases.

Some leaders in Congress have expressed outrage that Trump would compromise the well-being of military families to pay for the wall after Congress refused the funding. - EducationVotes

Addendum: Be sure to click and read the comment, for an explanation of what the parking lot is really about.

MN-08: Stauber hits the ground working hard for Big Sulfide Mining

To be fair, too many politicians in Minnesota, from both parties, don’t have their heads right on this either. But since I live in MN-08, and now have to endure the humiliation of Republican representation in the U.S. House for one of only a few times in my life (by the luck of the draw I’ve almost always lived in blue districts), damn right I’ll be picking on Pete.

(Jan. 14), Congressman Pete Stauber (MN-08) introduced H.R. 527, the Superior National Forest Land Exchange Act of 2019. This bipartisan legislation provides legal certainty by codifying the land exchange between PolyMet Mining, Inc. and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) into statute. The legislation will move PolyMet one step closer to responsibly developing the NorthMet ore body located in northeastern Minnesota. This is Stauber’s first bill introduced as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. - stauber.house.gov

From the sane, rational side of the issue, in a press release emailed Tuesday:

Today, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), along with the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club, filed legal challenges to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s permits for the PolyMet sulfide mine proposal. 

In their challenge to the air permit, the conservation and environmental groups describe how MPCA repeatedly ignored evidence that PolyMet has engaged in a bait and switch scheme.  In its air permit, PolyMet agreed to limit the amount of ore processed daily to keep its emissions of particulate matter under certain levels and to avoid having to install the best available emission control technology. However, PolyMet has already signaled that it intends to process ore at a much faster rate, resulting in significantly increased emissions. PolyMet should be required to install the best air emission technology available prior to construction, not avoid this vital Clean Air Act review through sham permitting. - MCEA

MN-08: Stauber emails broke the law

Pete Stauber is the Republican candidate for the U.S. House in MN-08, which happens to be where I live. From today:

Today, St. Louis County officials finally released controversial emails that Pete Stauber has been hiding from the taxpayers. Jordan Hagert, Campaign Manager for Joe Radinovich, released the following statement: “These emails are clear evidence that Pete Stauber has been openly and knowingly violating the law and county policy to use taxpayer resources to advance his political agenda. Stauber then went on to lie about the fact that he had used county staff and resources for campaign purposes, and he knew it was illegal to do so. It’s part of a broader pattern of misleading the public. He’s been as slippery on his policy positions as he has been untruthful about these emails, and it's clear Stauber can’t be trusted to do the right thing when no one is looking.”

You may be wondering why I’m not calling Stauber a liar, in my own remarks. For me, lying is when someone is consciously aware that she is making a claim that’s not true. Years of careful observation have convinced me that right-wing politicians are so far gone in motivated reasoning and cognitive rigidity that they honestly believe every word of the pitiable nonsense they spout. The best example, these days, is of course Stauber’s big booster “President” Donald "Traitor" Trump. People whose minds “work” like that are certainly not what we should have running things.

But, hey, DFL candidate Joe Radinovich was a wild kid, a long time ago, and that’s what really matters here, right? In fact, the Stauber campaign has been atrociously hypocritical, throughout.

Yeah Pete. Hammer such scofflaw things as traffic tickets. The purity of the "hard workers who obey the law in CD8" is a tremendous thing to run on, when little else favors a Trumpster Congressional wannabe, with Trumpster cohort criminal pleas falling right, left and center; immunity grants included. Millionaires cheating the government, big time crime, and Stauber turning a blind eye to such true CRIME to talk traffic tickets. - Developers are Crabgrass

Just the other week I had occasion to take a drive across the south part of the district. That is, past a lot of corn and soybean fields. We’ll see whether, given the effects of Trump's trade policies, this area is less red than usual.