I officially endorse this idea.

If it’s Thursday, a bunch of the usual New Urbanist suspects have ginned up another “study” “proving” the “costs” of “sprawl”.

Combining the the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S., he found, commuters pay more than $107 billion annually, which is about $1,400 per commuter, on average. Those are the dollar costs of the number of additional hours Americans spend traveling to and from work due to sprawling land-use patterns—which, by their methodology, ends up being around 3.9 billion extra hours total, or 50 hours per worker, per year.

To get to those rather staggering numbers, Hertz developed a unique methodology: He took the average commute length, in miles, for America’s 50 largest metros (as determined by the Brookings Institution), and looked at how much shorter those commutes would be if each metro were more compact. He did this by setting different commute benchmarks for clusters of comparably populated metros: six miles for areas with populations of 2.5 million or below, and 7.5 miles for those with more than 2.5 million people. These benchmarks were just below the commute length of the metro with the shortest average commute length in each category, but still 0.5 miles within the real average of the overall category.

He multiplied the difference between the benchmark and each metro’s average commute length by an estimated cost-per-mile for a mid-sized sedan, then doubled that number to represent a daily roundtrip “sprawl tax” per worker, and then multiplied that by the number of workers within a metro region to get the area’s daily “sprawl tax.” After multiplying that by the annual number of workdays, and adding up each metro, he had a rough estimate of how much sprawl costs American commuters every year.

Wow.  All of those suburbanites sure must be stupid, moving where life costs more!

Except it doesn’t.  City living nickels and dimes you to death; taxes are higher, the cost of non-slum rent or mortgages are higher, city services will get you coming and going, and then there’s the psychic cost of living in a city, almost inevitably run by Democrats with the attendant lousy services, dodgy schools and arrogant, imperious bureaucrats, to say nothing of the psychological cost involved in high-density living; apartment life, mass transit life, and all the other petty miseries of big city life.

No – the free market created the suburbs, as millions of GIs returning from spending the best years of their lives jammed “nuts to butts” on troop trains, troop ships and in barracks sprang for some elbow room for their kids; subsequent generations dabbled in the city, looked around, and skedaddled for the subs when the kids came along.   More on that point tomorrow.

As Kevin Williamson points out, the most powerful word in the free market is “no”; three generations of families have said “no” to “high density” life, and “yes” to the burbs.

To:  The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence, “Protect” MN
From:  Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Suggestion

Last night, you had your “Orange” events around selected parts of the Metro – or at least Eagan (a snug little suburban enclave) and the Stone Arch Bridge, the heart of the gentrified waterfront.

And yet in all your communications, you decry violence…where it’s happening, North Minneapolis.

So why didn’t you (plural) hold your march / event / vigil up there?

That is all.

Was the “school service officer” in this video – posted on Facebook yesterday, shot at Central High School in Saint Paul – the bad guy, using a lot of force to subdue a guy who, it’s claimed, had transferred to a different school and was back for some unspecified reason?

Or, as the school district said, was he just doing his job with an uncooperative, trespassing student?

None of us saw how this episode started.  And Black Lives Matter is involved – they had a rally at Central yesterday – so all sides are going to go into siege mode; we’ll never know.

And since we’ll never know, most would say it’d be most prudent to say we don’t know who the good and bad guys are in this video.

But we do. We most definitely do have a bad “guy”; the school staffer who swoops into the frame around 1:21, to tell the kid to stop taping what’s going on?

She’s the bad guy.

Katie Couric’s “docoumentary” “about” “guns in America” has been busted engaging in misleading editing to try to embarass pro-Human-rights activists.

Here’s what appeared on Couric’s broadcast:

However, raw audio of the interview between Katie Couric and the activists provided to theWashington Free Beacon shows the scene was deceptively edited. Instead of silence, Couric’s question is met immediately with answers from the activists. A back and forth between a number of the league’s members and Couric over the issue of background checks proceeds for more than four minutes after the original question is asked.

Here’s the raw audio:

The first, most obvious lesson? If you’re a human rights advocate, and someone from the media actually deigns to speak with you, and they want to do it in recorded form – record the interview. You’ll have to do it surreptitiously – mainstream media people often demand to have complete control of the narrative. So record them anyway. You are more likely than not to bust them in a lie.

Why?

Because this category is called “Lie First, Lie Always”.

Under the Gun bills itself as a documentary that “examines the events and people who have kept the gun debate fierce and the progress slow, even as gun deaths and mass shootings continue to increase.”

Which they have not.

But you knew that.

The only surprise would have been had they not been caught lying.

Yesterday was “Beyonce Day” in Minnesota.

Congratulations, Ms. Beyonce.

But the interesting part of the story was here (emphasis added):

In honor of Beyoncé’s performance tonight, Governor Mark Dayton and Lt. Governor Tina Smith have proclaimed Monday, May 23, 2016, to be “Beyoncé Day” in Minnesota.

Huh.

So when was the last time you say the Lieutenant Governor specifically mentioned in issuing this kind of proclamation?

They’re preparing the battlefield for Dayton’s resignation, and for Flint-Smith’s appointment as Governor.

The more I think about it, the more I think the “after the Super Bowl” predictions for Dayton’s resignation were dead-on.

Last week, I wrote about Minneapolis City Councilor Alondra Cano and Minneapolis NAACP president Nekima Levy-Pounds complaining about being “victims of racism” – Cano for having been criticized by her fellow councilpeople, Levy-Pounds for being scolded for barging in and interrupting giving public input at a Park Board meeting where public input was not on the agenda.

So I have to ask – is it even possible for…:

• Cano, a senior member of a one-party political system that controls Minneapolis no les scompletely than the Stasi controlled East Germany, a woman who has the sort of power that mere citizens can’t possible imagine, a woman who is guaranteed a much-better-than-living-wage for the rest of her life, between the political system and the rent-seeking non-profit sector, even if she doesn’t run for mayor or the Legislature (as, rumor has it, she will), and accede to even more power and long-term wealth, and…
• Levy-Pounds, a professor with tenure – she can never be fired from her job (unless Saint Thomas law school closes) who earns an upper-middle-class income and has the sort of social and political access that nobody in this audience does, a woman who can get Betsy Hodges and Chris Coleman to say “how high, ma’am?” when she says “Jump”

…to feel “racism” in any way that matters given their status as “One Percenters” in the social and political class diagram?

I say “that matters” because after a certain point, as the great African-American and arch-liberal columnist William Raspberry once said, at a certain point you have to realize racism is just ignorance, and beneath you.   Given the power and status that the likes of Cano and Levy-Pounds have accreted, isn’t “racism” to them sort of like Erik Pusey criticizing my writing – it is irrelevant, and has no real, tangible impact on my interaction with the real world?

Today, Syttende Mai, is the 111th anniversary of the Norske Revolusjon – when Norwegian patriots, chafing under decades of Swedish/Danish tyranny, rebelled, casting off the brutal, authoritarian Swedish monarchy in an epic cataclysm that ended in a titanic battle in the hills outside Kristiansand, a crushing victory for the grossly-outnumbered Norwegians that sent the demoralized Swedes into a panicked retreat in the short term, and a social tailspin in the long run.

After the battle, and when the treaty was signed that granted Norway its hard=earned independence, General Olaf Haraldsson proclaimed:

Med allmektige Gud som vitne i dag, jeg sverger før du at fra i dag fram til slutten av tid og norsk skal noensinne baugen ned før en svenske. Det er bare galt

Words we cal all live by?  I think we can all agree on this.

So happy birthday, Norway!

(more…)

Five years after Governor Flint-Smith Dayton got his Vikings Stadium deal, he admits his “e-pulltab” proposal – which was supposed to fund the state’s share of Zygi Wilf’s real-estate upgrade – was a flop (emphasis added):

By now, it’s a well-known fact that the plan to fund the state’s $498 million share of the new Vikings stadium with revenue from electronic pulltabs was a bust, but now Gov. Mark Dayton is owning up to it.

“You know, there were multiple errors made, and in hindsight, obviously we were terribly wrong,” Dayton toldMinnesota Public Radio.

Well, no, Governor Flint-Smith Dayton; you and the hysterical ninnies in the Legislature who buckled under to a bunch of louts dressed in fake Vikingwear were terribly wrong.

We – conservatives, people who both believe it’s not government’s job to build stadiums, and who do our freaking homework about shiny toys like e-pulltabs – were terribly right all along.

…to the Saint Paul police PR operator who wrote this tweet.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The US economy grew in the first quarter of 2016, but only a tiny bit, 0.5%.  That’s technically enough to keep it from being called a “recession.”

 First, do you believe that number?  Economic estimates are routinely announced with pronounced spin showing how well the administration’s policies are working, then quietly revised downward a few months later.  There’s not much room to revise this number downward.

 Second, look at the formula for calculating GDP:

 Gross Domestic Product = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + (Exports – Imports)

 If the federal government wants the GDP number to look good, it can manipulate the formula by increasing government spending to offset decreases in Consumption, Investment and Net Exports.  But federal government spending slowed down in the first quarter.  And the GDP number is falling as a result.  The implications are important.

 It means there never was any growth in the Consumer or Investment side of the economy, that’s all been propped up by federal government spending.  In other words, we’ve been experiencing negative economic growth for months, maybe years, but it’s been masked by federal government spending.  I’m looking at you, Barack Obama, and your $20 Trillion national debt.

 The take-away is simple: don’t worry about Great Depression 2.0 coming; it’s already here.  Worry about what happens when the ordinary public figures it out.

 Joe Doakes

Like we need any more good news this week…

So I guess the withdrawal of Ted Cruz from the presidential race means November will be a contest between an ignorant, cynical, morally bankrupt New Yorker who has accomplished nothing and been obscenely overpaid for it…
… And Donald Trump.

A friend of the blog writes:

…will be the first to propose that women all wear full burqas in order to protect us from any man we might encounter in public? I mean, it isn’t that much of a stretch when someone is already suggesting segregated transit.

I, for one, predict a system of separate but equal schools…

It was said about “Protect” MN’s former “executive director” (and pretty much sole member) Heather Martens ^[1] that “she never once made a single subsantial, original, true statement about the Second Amendment, gun facts or gun rights”.

When The Right Reverend Nancy Nord Bence took over at “Protect” MN a few weeks back, we had hope that things might change at Minnesota’s “leading” criminal-safety group ^[2].

In her press release related to this past Tuesday’s events at the SLOB, we see that hope was misplaced – with hilarious results.

Hi Reinhard,
Good news: The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was a great success!

And by the standards of”Protect” MN, it probably was.  Their all-out effort turned out about as many people as the Human Rights community’s casual call for supporters with spare time did.  None of their people were ejected from the building for trying to pick a fight with Human Rights supporters.  None of their paid lobbyists appeared in the place of an elected official, to immense ridicule.

By their standards, it was a red-letter day.

But now we get into the out-and-out lying.  Emphasis added:

On Tuesday, April 26, hundreds of Minnesotans who have had ENOUGH gathered at the Senate Office Building in St. Paul for an informational hearing on legislation that will go a long way towards protecting Minnesotans from gun violence: Senator Latz’ universal background check bill (S.F. 2493) and gun violence protective order bill (S.F. 2980).

Let’s go through the lies in order.

“Protect” MN is apparenetly taking counting lessons from the Strib:  there were not “Hundreds of supporters.   As people were let into the hearing, there were roughly 150 all together – about equally divided between criminal-safety advocates and Human Rights supporters.

Just to prove it?  Here are some photos.  Here’s the front half of the line gathered to get into the hearing – which, as you can see, is about 3/4 maroon-clad Human Rights supporters:

Here’s the back half of the line; probably 2/3 Criminal Safety advocates, with their ELCA hairdos and that air of unearned self-righteousness, unblemished by actual knowledge, roiling off them like Axe off of teenage boys:

A count as the doors opened showed roughly 70-80 on each side.  A few more streamed in on both sides – but the chamber, which held 250, was never close to full.

Fact:  “Protect” MN has never turned out “hundreds” of people in a given session, much less at a single event.

Second lie?  It wasn’t an “informational hearing”.  It was a sham; a Potemkin hearing, trying to create the illusion that these two bills aren’t utterly dead issues this session.  It was, in other words, a campaign event, held at taxpayer expense.

Third?   Neither bill will ever save a single life.  Ever!   Universal registration will only burden the law-abiding.  And the “Take Your Soon-To-Be-Estranged Sig-Other’s Guns Without Due Process!” bill is nothing but a make-work program for lawyers.

Scheduled to coincide with the Moms Demand Action lobby day, the room was packed with enthusiastic Moms as well as Protect Minnesota members. The gun lobby was also out in force.

I’m just going to let the word “packed” lie there, like the magnificant rhetorical turd it is.

Although no action will be taken on these bills this session, this informational hearing was important and very successful. It captured the attention of the media, disputed the gun lobby’s false claims, “set the table” for the debate that will ensue in months to come, and fired up the masses of gun safety supporters in attendance.

Fourth lie:  The media coverage was sparse and perfunctory.

Fifth Lie:  “Disputing” doesn’t make anything “false”; you can “dispute” gravity, but if you don’t float away afterward, you’ve falsified nothing.

Sixth Lie:  Masses?  Masses?

We commend Senator Ron Latz for his bold leadership on this issue, and commit the whole resources of Protect Minnesota to assisting in the passage of these bills in 2017.

It may not be a “lie” to say Latz is a “leader” on the issue.  He’s doing what Michael Bloomberg told him to do.

Meet the new “Protect”MN.  Same as the old “Protect”MN.

[1]  Said by me, of course – but known by everyone who actually paid attention to the issue.  At all.  Ever.

[2] In the same sense that Timberwolves fans “hope” that this will be the big year they’ve been waiting for.

National Review on Prince.

Pro.

Con – not about Prince, but about society’s view of fame.

Go.

So the left “thinks” ¹ that Wayne LaPierre is two steps down below Satan.   Indeed, as many on the left fancy themselves empiricists, spirituality gives them an unearned chuckle.

But they always make an exception for Buddhism.  Because Far East.

And on one issue, I’ll agree with ’em; I wish more Western religious leaders had the moral clarity to say this:

And no – it’s not apocryphal.   (Or especially well-informed; he urges one to shoot “at the leg”.  It’d take a lot of meditation to calm an adrenaline rush enough to make that feasible).

Your turn, Reverend Nancy Nord Bence.

¹ Where “think” = “has been painstakingly been trained to regurgitate”

Remember way back, when the left wanted the government out of people’s bedrooms?

Either does the Left.    A liberal legal conclave is debating moving “affirmative consent” laws off of campus and to the general population:

The American Law Institute will vote in May on whether to adopt a model penal code that would make “affirmative consent” the official position of the organization. Affirmative consent — or “yes means yes” — policies have already been adopted by many colleges and universities, and have been passed as law in California and New York.

In my dreams, Hillary Clinton appoints Melissa Click as Attorney General…

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today.  We’ll be talking conventions, Harriet Tubman, Prince, and so much more!

• Christina Norman will join us to talk about the movie “Climate Hustle”

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

The most dangerous thing in the world to be, for the past 70 years, has been a “moderate Muslim”.

It’s been very much in the interest of every wave of Arab and Muslim radical – from the grand mufti of Jerusalem, through the PLO, to Al Qaeda and ISIS – to make the Muslim in the street afraid not to get out-of-the-way, if not overtly join them.

Which brings us to this.

It was another successful pledge week!

As I’ve said many, many times; I’d do this blog for free, and for an audience of five a day – which is how it started. The fact that I have a decent-sized audience just makes it more fun. The fact that so many of you chip in a buck or two to support me in this effort, on top of all that, is both humbling and exhilarating.

Thanks, all!

More information about SITD and the Pledge Drive.

Here’s the mindset of a Minnesota DFL her; Jack up taxes, raise minimum wages, eliminate the tip credit…

… And then wonder why restaurants are dropping off faster than contestants on the latest Gordon Ramsey show.

Every April, I do a pledge drive.   It’s purely voluntary, but much, much appreciated.

More information about SITD and the Pledge Drive.

UPDATE: Schwoops. Not sure what happened. Fixed the donation button. Sorry…

The Republicans of the Upper Midwest have made their distaste for Trump pretty obvious.  The Donald lost Minnesota and Iowa bright and early, and went on to tank in Wisconsin and, over the weekend, North Dakota.

I won’t say I predicted it in as many words – but this bit summarizes what I’d hoped and believed; Trump’s braggadocio doesn’t resonate with quiet, modest, stoic, passive aggressive Minnesotans.

Most of us have heard of “Minnesota Nice” — the friendly, reserved, play-by-the-rules behavior favored by that state’s residents. But Wisconsin has a similar Scandinavian (though more German) culture, as do North and South Dakota. When the Upper Midwest of Europe relocated to the Upper Midwest of the United States, they brought their politeness, understatement, and emotional restraint with them.

All of these characteristics are diametrically opposed to the Trump ethos of baseless braggadocio, histrionic complaint, and conflict as first resort. Critics of Minnesota Nice cast it as barely masked passive-aggressiveness, but active-aggressiveness is considered not only unseemly, but unmanly.

Scandis find virtue in stoicism. When you’re shoveling a sidewalk buried in three feet of snow, your neighbor doesn’t want to hear your complaints — especially since she’s 68, has a bum leg, and cleared her driveway before the sun rose. Just do what needs to be done, and would it kill you to put a smile on your face?

Invoking “Minnesota Nice” is lazy – but it’s not wrong, either.

…and, lets be honest, inevitable.

Because outside the Twin Cities,every once in a while, the editorial cartoons slip up and tell the truth about Democrats;.

The Rochester Post-Bulletin printed this editorial cartoon about Rochester Representative Kim Norton yesterday:

  
Not bad. Not bad at all.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement. During a session in which representative Norton has wasted taxpayer time jabbering about exploding bullets” and numbers from surveys that wouldn’t rule in elementary school music teacher, I think I could come up with something pretty good, here, too…

  
Yeah, that works too.