Thursday, April 10, 2008

Al Franken: The Lie and the Lying Liar that Told It

Al Franken should have moved out of his glass house when he "moved" from New York to Minnesota to run for a US Senate seat. Franken, of course, is the author of such discourse-promoting, playground language-filled literature as Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. He aspires to knock Norm Coleman out of the US Senate seat formerly held by a Minnesota legend, the late Paul Wellstone.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported last month that Franken was in hock to the State of New York for $25,000 in penalties for the failure of his eponymous corporation, Alan Franken Inc., to carry Worker's Compensation insurance from 2002 to 2005. That's right, the leading candidate in the US Senate endorsement race for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party didn't pay the Worker's Comp. insurance for a business that paid him a salary of over $1,000,000 last year.

According the Minneapolis newspaper, officials from the State of New York had been attempting to contact Franken since April 2005 without satisfaction. The explanation offered by Franken's campaign spokesman to the Star-Tribune was "that neither Franken nor his wife, Franni, were aware of the matter before Tuesday. They have lived in Minneapolis for the past few years and did not know about the state's attempts to reach them in New York City."

A blogger, Michael B. Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed, originally broke the story last month. Discount the source as partisan if you wish, but today the same blogger received a copy of Harvard University's Class of 1973 35th Anniversary Report, which contained a personal statement by Franken - a member of Harvard's Class of '73. Here's what he had to say:

The catch to this entire story is that Franken gives the Harvard publication his "former" address in New York City, apparently the same one the State of New York, as well as a collections agency retained by the state, had been attempting to reach him at for the past three years. If we're to take the Franken campaign's word that the candidate "did not know about the state's attempts to reach them in New York City," then we can logically conclude Franken's never heard of mail-forwarding, or that he simply doesn't care that potential donors to his carpetbagging campaign will be attempting to contact him at his New York address. If Franken truly doesn't live at that address, I'll bet the new tenant is pretty surprised and confused when $4,600 checks arrive at that address.

The Star-Tribune outlined the attempts to contact Franken:

Officials first sought an explanation. Receiving no response, they sent a penalty notice to Franken in June 2005 that outlined rights to appeal.

The state then turned to a collection agency to reach Franken. When that didn't work, the state tried again in July 2006. Penalty statements were sent in August and December of 2006 and March 2007, Keegan said.

The judgment was finally entered against Franken in May 2007, and another notice sent by certified mail to his Manhattan apartment. Since then, Keegan said, three more statements have been sent -- the most recent in January -- without response.

According to The New York Times, Franken paid the delinquent sum shortly after the original story broke. This appears to be the second time Franken's business has run afoul of the State of New York. In 1997, a lien for $2,948.30 was slapped against the corporation in Nassau County for failure to pay withholding taxes.

From a personal point of view, Franken's candidacy is a slap in the face to the Minnesota electorate and the other candidates who have run for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party's endorsement. Franken left Minnesota for Harvard in 1969, graduated in 1973, and began working as a writer and performer for Saturday Night Live in 1975. His tenure with SNL extended from 1975-1980, and again from 1985-1995. His children were raised in New York City and attended an elite prep school there before attending Ivy League universities. The message of Franken's campaign for a Minnesota Senate seat therefore seems to be "Minnesota wasn't good enough for me to live in when I was raising my family, but it conveniently suits my purposes now." If Franken was a resident of Minnesota at any time between the early 1970s and when he returned to run for Senate thirty years later, I haven't seen any record of it.

Don't get me wrong, I think Norm Coleman (Franken's neoconservative Republican opponent) is near the bottom of the barrel as a politician, and I'd love to see him out of office. However, Franken is worse than an empty suit like Coleman - he represents pure political cancer, the kind of shrill, self-serving, screeching, pig-headed partisan who won't be held accountable for his own actions, attributes he shares with such luminaries as Larry Craig and Eliot Spitzer. I don't care what side of the aisle you call home or how much you agree with Franken's political stances, Franken isn't the kind of person who should be elected to political office unless you value legislative gridlock and petty name-calling over progress and responsible governance.

Thankfully, Jesse Ventura might be entering the race. The last time he got between a Republican (Coleman) and a Democrat (Hubert H. "Skip" Humphrey III), he was elected Governor of Minnesota. Ventura was a thorn in the side for Minnesota Democrats and Republicans alike during his term, refusing to allow either party to push him around and regularly calling them out for partisan attacks.

As Governor, Ventura enjoyed the highest-ever approval rating while in office, and as a moderate libertarian in the Senate would have a fiscally conservative, socially liberal record which would likely be palatable to political centrists and conducive to effective governance through legislative compromise. In a matter of personal importance to the author, Ventura is vehemently against the Iraq War. Information on Ventura's political stances is available, issue-by-issue, here.

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