Monday, May 23, 2005

Kleis kludged by Chamber 

Psycmeister has a great story of how the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce screwed up and slandered Senator Dave Kleis, by sending a form letter to the St. Cloud Times saying Kleis supported a tax increase which he in fact opposed. MCC now claims its a clerical error. Psycmeister reports the form letter now has a disclaimer stating the error on its website. And late in the day a commenter said he got a letter back from MCC prez and letter author David Olson:
There is clearly a mix up here and we are trying to get to the bottom of it. We know that Senator Kleis did not vote for the tax increase so we will be doing something shortly to remedy this.
Hey, mistakes happen! I hope it publishes a clarification on its printed page tomorrow.

What is remarkable to me is that our university is still campaigning about anonymous comments on the Times site, yet in this case not only did they expose the error and get it corrected, but that not one but three local legislators -- including the two area DFL legislators -- came up to Sen. Kleis' defense rather early in the day. But in the middle of the chat there's our Mayor Ellenbecker trying to score a political point on Pogomonster's soak-the-rich tax increase. Ellenbecker would do well to get off those boards -- he keeps adding fuel to the fire. Which, as long as he is going to stand in the middle of it, is just fine by me.

UPDATE (5/24): Olson of the MCC sends a retraction and apology to the Times.
Our sincere apologies to Sen. Dave Kleis for our letter Sunday, which misstated his vote on the Senate tax bill ("Kleis' vote on taxes sends clear message.")
He did not vote for the tax increase, and we know better. The mistake was ours, regardless how it happened.

Translation: The dog ate my homework, but it's my fault.

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