Neel Kashkari benched!
Called on the carpet by the Big Fed
There was an interesting and positive development in Minnesota politics reported in the Star Tribune on Friday, February 24th. The Big Fed told Neel Kashkari that he can’t use his Little Fed to lobby for the Page Amendment. Kashkari is the president of the Ninth District Little Fed. The Strib says that Bloomberg News first learned about this on January 31st of this year, sixty-two days after the Big Fed says its new “no lobbying” policy went into effect.
If that’s true, one wonders how it escaped everybody’s attention for sixty-two days. Regardless, I’m glad it happened. Perhaps first among Minnesotans, I’m glad it happened.
You see, on January 9th of this year, I filed a complaint with the Minnesota’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board against Neel Kashkari for lobbying (extensively) without filing as a lobbyist or disclosing what he spent to do it, since 2019. If you follow the link, you will see that the complaint has 70 pages of exhibits of Kashkari’s lobbying activity. The Campaign Finance Board dismissed the complaint, not saying that Kashkari didn’t lobby, but rather because he didn’t spend his own money; he spent the Little Fed’s. A lot of it.
This is probably why, among other reasons, the Big Fed was sore at Mr. Kashkari. I have criticized Kashkari and his lobbying for the Page Amendment — and the Page Amendment itself — for at least a couple of years prior to filing the complaint. Here is just some of that criticism.
The Page Amendment is a Trojan horse to destroy public schools
If you read the Strib article, you’ll see that the Page Amendment is probably dead anyway, but for me, this is the cherry on the banana split.
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