Where’s The Money?

The Minneapolis City Council’s vote on minimum wages for independent contractor drivers has driven Lyft out of Minneapolis, and Uber out of both cities.

A friend of the blog emails with an initial reaction very close to my own:

The Minneapolis City Council doesn’t actually understand a lot. They want affordable options, but they want people to be paid high wages. It doesn’t always work that way.http://apnews.com/article/minneapolis-uber-lyft-ridehailing-minimum-wage-d60db6a2e2580dc1d93c438a8cffa5ee

That being said, Uber and Lyft were never affordable here in the Twin Cities like they are elsewhere. That is likely because the market here doesn’t support it like it might in cities with higher density populations. 

This article mentions that “Seattle and New York City have passed similar policies in recent years that increase wages for ride-hailing drivers, and Uber and Lyft still operate in those cities.”

Yes, well, the cost to use those services was lower to start with because they actually could make money there. So, they are likely still making money even if passengers are paying more to ride. I would bet those services were barely making it here as it was. It’s not hard to drive most places, it’s not even particularly expensive. The downtowns of MSP are mostly dead anyway, so who is using Lyft and Uber at this stage anymore? As far as I can tell, the council’s stupid ordinance just gave them the excuse to pull out. 

That was pretty much what I thought; it was yet another case of a prog city council demanding the world violate the laws of economics to give them what they want.

But wait. There’s more.

It’s the current DFL – so one must always check to see if there’s an ulterior motive involving transferring wealth from taxpayers to the DFL’s non-profit/government complex.

And of course there is:

There you go – Soviet-style ride sharing.

Because the DSA needs to make sure they get a cut of all that ride-share money.

This Is What “Security Crackdown” Looks LIke

Metro Transit posted a “code of conduct” a few weeks ago, to much derision. “All window dressing and lip service”, the wags said.

So Metro Transit added their interveners.

Looks like we still got lip service and window dressing. Perhaps we call it “lip dressing”:

So – not only is the collapse of social mores being encouraged by the aggressive lack of consequences, but we get to transfer tax dollars to more bureaucrats and their employees while we do it.

I call that adding insult to insult to insult to injury to injury .

Mostly Legal

Gang carjacks an SUV, goes on a Tarantino-ready crime spree:

The only real question: what ethical and moral gymnastics will Mary Moriarty go through to make sure none of them serves a moment in prison?

Failures Of Reimagination

Hang onto your wallets. The same bureaucrats who connived with the City of Minneapolis’s ruling class are, uh, “reimagining” again:

“We’re going to talk about how we’re going to reimagine downtown,” Adam Duininck, Minneapolis Downtown Council president, said at the annual meeting. “Our story’s going to continue to be centered around public safety, inclusion and reimagining the future of downtown.”

Duininck, a former head of the Met Council, is a lifelong DFL fixture; his imagination has given this blog a lot of material over the years. While the Southwest Light Rail debacle wasn’t entirely his fault, he was part of the ocntinuum of bureaucratic arrogance and, shall we say, less than exceptional capability that has turned that project into the flaming dumpster it’s been since its inception.

And now, with the Downtown Council – the crowd that brought you the redevelopment of Block E – they want to “Reimagine” again.

Downtown safety continues to be a concern for some Minnesotans.

Taking a look at 2023 city data, violent crime is down about 14% downtown compared to 2022.

Why do they never compare crime with, say, 2016?

Anyway – this is far from the first time the “in” crowd has tried to “reimagine” downtown; efforts go back to the disastrous “Urban Renewal” effots in the ’50s and ’60s, the building of Nicollet Mall in the ’60s and ’70s, the building of the Metrodome in the ’80s, the rebuilding of the Nicollet Mall in the ’80s, Light Rail, the de-building of the Metrodome and its replacement with Darth Vader’s fishing cabin, Betsy Hodges’ exquisitely expensive Bauhaus rebuilding of Nicollet Mall in the 2010s…

…and the’re not done with Nicollet Mall:

Looking ahead, city leaders said there will be challenges, but 2023 was a turning point to reinvent what downtown could be.

On Nicollet Mall, we can have a fully pedestrian world-class mall. We can set a tone for other cities to follow,” Frey said. “Why can’t it be more like Times Square? Why can’t we have digital billboards off and tons of light and activity? Why can’t we use that excess revenue to do more programming to make sure that there’s activity 100% of the time?”

Another goal has been to get people back in the office downtown.

“On Nicollet Mall, we can have a fully pedestrian world-class mall”.

What – again?

Could someone just buy the Downtown Council a “Minecraft” subscription?

The free market could, of course, settle this inside a generation – if there were a free market in force downtown.

Downtown Minnepolis is in the state it’s in because of politics – the spring from which government planning flows, and the arthritic yet flighty decision making process that comes with it.

Pretty Vacant

Remember this episode – one of the events boosters of Downtown Minneapolis have hung their hat on as a symbol of their commitment and capability?

It’s the 1999 move of the historic Schubert Theater [1] – a $14 million move that was part of a $42 million (in 1999 dollars – call it about $73 million today – as part of one of the various downtown revitalization efforts that happened before downtown got devitalized. The Cowles family pumped a pile of money into turning it into a community art space – home to a dance theater and other arts companies.

Well, Downtown Minneapolis is gonna downtownminneapolis:

The Cowles Center for Dance and Performing Arts announced Wednesday that it would end its dance programming at the Goodale Theater as of March 31. The downtown Minneapolis center’s educational and community programs will, however, continue through the end of the 2023-24 school year in May.

“It became clear, probably several months ago, that Artspace, our largest donor and administrative partner, was having their own financial troubles, which wouldn’t allow them to sustain their level of giving to the Cowles,” said Joseph Bingham, co-director of the Cowles Center. “We’ve been working in the background to kind of figure out what that meant financially and figure out either a Plan B or whether that meant potential fundraising or another partner in the picture.”

According to Bingham, two weeks ago, Cowles staff found that Artspace’s financial picture couldn’t sustain the performing arts center.

It’s unlikely that financial disarray in an arts organization is directly connected to the crime and economic malaise that’s been Downtown’s dominant feature this past four years.

But for at least some people – in this case, Libertarian Burnsville City Councilwoman Cara Schulz – one other social and literal contagion had something to do with it:

I wrote Cara to clarify. There was literally an email saying “good riddance and a pox on your house, as it were”, or words to that effect.

But yet another unused building certainly isn’t going to help things.

So – here’s the current plan:

  • Some major network picks up my show. Maybe weekday afternoons.
  • I turn the building into a broadcast studio (a la Keillor at the Fitzgerald) and conservative event center.

[1] Ho Lee Crap. 25 years?

Urban Progressive Privilege: Clouds Of Smug Descend

“Art” as humanity used to know it is pretty much dead, at least in any community of people who call themselves “artists” anymore.

This was from a, for lack of a better term, “art event” in Powderhorn Park over the weekend:

Ignore the stupid sled.

Look, rather, at the audience. What do you see?

Inevitably, they are smug, corn-fed, entitled, white progressive members of the laptop class and the non-profit/industrial complex – no doubt from “Urban Life” theme parks like Marcy Holmes or Merriam Park, larping it up as “art fans” in Powderhorn, the part of Minneapolis that smug progressives go to when they want to be “down with the neighborhood” (before they scamper back home to where all the barristas and short order brunch technicians have to commute to from Fridley and Brooklyn Center).

The MPD has condemned the display – which, I’m sure, is causing all sorts of nasal snorking over lattes this morning.

And why not? It’s not their stores being cleaned out (none of them as any concept of the free market more involved than a coffee shop), not their cars being jacked (does anyone actually steal electric cars?), not them waking up to bullet holes in their siding.

Here’s hoping every last one of these cretins needs a cop sometime soon.

Who knows? Sometimes even Progressives can learn something.

For Want Of A Strongly-Worded Sign

SCENE 1: It is Constantinople, 1453. The Ottoman forces under SULEIMAN THE GREAT have breached the inner wall of defenses, on their way toward changing the city’s name to Istanbul. SULEIMAN and GENERAL KARAKÜL are standing in the breach, as troops stream past, on their way to loot, rape and pillage.

KARAKÜL: “Go forth and seize what you will, and burn the rest, for you have earned it!

SULEIMAN: (Looking at a sign, in Greek, just inside the wall). Uh, just a moment. The sign says “No raping, looting, pillaging or burning”.

KARAKÜL: Ooops. Good catch, your excellency. (Yelling to troops) Check that. No looting, raping or pillaging!


SCENE 2: Nürnberg, Germany, 1934. The leaders of the recently-empaneled German “Emergency Cabinet” led by Adolf HITLER, are walking from a meeting to a small vegetarian cafe for lunch, discussing their plans now that they’ve achieved complete control of Germany.

HITLER: So, we’ve agreed. The campaign for Lebensraum and the final solution to the “Jewish Problem” must proceed in parallel…”

RUDOLPH HESS: Uh, Mein Führer, before we go too far on that, check that out.

(HESS points at a multicolored sign on the wall next to the cafe.

HITLER: “In this haus, we believe that science is real, that nobody is illegal, that Jews are Human…”

MARTIN BORMAN: D’oh.

HITLER: That changes everything. Maybe we should just work something about with the Poles about Danzig…


SCENE 3: Minneapolis. It’s 1AM on a Saturday morning. Inge SVENSSON and Guiseppe MORELLI, two young hoodlums with arms laden with bottles of cheap vodka and drug syringes, are walking onto the Green Line platform at Stadium Village.

MORELLI: Damn. I need a fix.

SVENSSON: Me too. And I feel like groping some chick.

MORELLI: Groping, my a**. I need to get some.

(A Green Line train with few passengers pulls up to the stop)

SVENSSON: I like how you think my good man. But first, I gotta take a dump.

MORELLI: Don’t be a pig and do it here. Do it on the train. And hurry – my back teeth are floating. Also, I gotta get high.

SVENSSON: Oh, s**t. Wait. Read this:

(Both men scrutinize the sign).

MORELLI: No pooping, peeing, drinking or drug use?

SVENSSON: Dammit. Now we gotta find a restaurant.

MORELLI: The Metro cares about that stuff now? Who knew?

And SCENE

Don’t Cry For Milei, Argentina

As Don Surber notes, suddenly everyone’s an expert on Argentina.

We’ll come back to that.

Libertarian-Conservative Javier Milei crushed his center-left opponent, showing Argentina’s crushing dissatisfaction with over a decade of center-to-far-left politics.

Big Left is, predictably, unhappy:

“A radical libertarian and admirer of Donald Trump rode a wave of voter rage to win Argentina’s presidency on Sunday, crushing the political establishment and bringing the sharpest turn to the right in four decades of democracy in the country.

“Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56% of the vote in a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Even before the official results had been announced Sunday night, Massa acknowledged defeat and congratulated Milei on his win.

“Trump also congratulated Milei. ‘I am very proud of you,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. ‘You will turn your Country around and Make Argentina Great Again!’”

Don Surber’s response – “don’t anoint him yet, but the vote matters more than the candidate – isn’t wrong at all.

But he adds:

I don’t recall Argentina being great before but diplomacy requires a certain suspension of reality. It’s the 1970s chant of I’m OK, You’re OK updated for international relations. I’m Great Again, You’re Great Again.

Thing is, Argentina was, if not “great”, at least doing really, really well not that terribly long ago:

So what happened?

As Paul Johnson pointed out in Modern Times, socialism – in this case, populist socialism in the form of Juan and Eva Peron – happened. Argentina went from relative wealth to decay and authoritarianism, and all it got was a lousy musical.

Huh – a great political entity that got sucked into a vortex of authoritarianism, stagnancy and decay by leftists who just kept winning elections?

Huh. Weird.

The Cano Corollary To Berg’s 21st Law

The Cano Corollary to Berg’s 21st Law is a new addition to the canon – and like all the Berg’s Laws, it is an observation that started as satire.

To wit:

In Blue city electoral politics, “blue” never gets “lighter” or less “progressive”.  There is only one electoral direction – more “progressive”.

It’s named for the former Minneapolis 9th Ward council woman, dotty dimbulb and “third world feminist” (a term almost as grimly hilarious as “queer for Palestine”) who, in retrospect,not only seems moderate, but likely would have a hard time getting nominated for office in MInneapolis, due to being “too centrist”.

It was in full effect in Minnneapolis and Saint Paul last night, Democratic Socialist-endorsed DFLers Aisha Chughtai and Aurin Chowdhury swept to wins. Depending on the machjinations of Ranked Choice Voting, it appears Soren Stevenson – another DFLer with DSA endorsement – might eke out a win over council president Andrea Jenkins – the leftist transgender black woman who, not so long ago, seemed like the left edge of the Overton Window, and may as well be Jesse Helms today.

I’ll point out that not only did I predict this after 2021, but so did Big Left; after the “Defund” question went town to humiliating defeat, Big Left swore they weren’t going to let that happen again. The DSA – which is now well within the left edge of the Overton WIndow – started pumping money and resources and lots and lots of noise into the race the week after the 2021 election.

Expect everything in Minneapolis to get worse, coarser, less civil, uglier and more stupid – until 2-4 years out, when a group comes along, refers to the DSA as “centrist” and the mainstsream DFL as “Republicans”. I wouldn’t rule out an overt Communist party, to the extent there’s actually a meaningful distinction anymore.

Saint Paul? Well, call it a split: DSA-endorsed Hwa Jeong Kim appears to have won in Ward 5; the DSA’s Pa Der Vant appears to have lost – but narrowly – in Ward 7.

The 1% sales tax hike to pay for the things the city was already supposed to be paying for with its ridiculous taxes, and perhaps to try to compensate for the gutting of the city’s retail sector? It passed overwhelmingly. There was never any action on that bet. The most regressive tax there is just got increased on a city full of people who are less able to pay it every day (thanks, “Bidenomics”).

School board? Garbage in, garbage out.

The closest thing I have to good news in the Cities proper? In my ward, Ward 4, people expressed their dissatisfaction with the “choices” – the unknown Bob Bushard and incumbent Mitra “Chasing Intersectional Perfection” Jalali by submitting about as many write-in votes than the rest of the city put together.

Other news that might, depending on what happens, be good? Duluth turned out Emily “Turbo-Karen” Larson for explicitly more moderate DFLer Roger Reinert. Will he be able to moderate the Duluth City Council – about whose results I know nothing. While you can’t judge a book by its cover, the winners last night all have names that scream “Progressive Karen” to me. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. .

Action on that bet? Step right up.

This Is Minneapolis, 2023

Zach Metzger is a candidate for Minneapolis CIty Council.

This was him after the riot on Sunday:

He’s running for City Council.

To my amazement, he didn’t win endorsement in the uppeer-middle-class “urban life” theme. park that is the 13th Ward

…but five’ll get you ten that if he moves to an open seat in Marcy Holmes, Powderhorn, the West Bank or Longfellow, his political career will get rolling for real.

Compromise

Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.

An Idea Almost Too Crazy To Comprehend

Enrollment at Twin Cities schools continues to erode:

We’ll wait for the Walz/Flanagan administration to register their theatrical shock that “free” mystery meat and unrestricted gay porn in school libraries isn’t drawing students like Dave Matthews fans to the last bag of Cheetoz.

But I have a question.

This seems like the sort of story where someone could spend some time finding out whether the parents of senior DFL leadership in the Twin Cities and the state overall – the ones who have kids, at least – send their kids to the schools their union patrons run.

How many City Councilpeople, Mayors, policy staffers, senior bureaucrats and school leadership send their children to Minneapolis and Saint Paul, or indeed any, public schools?

This is the sort of thing that would call for, I dunno, some class of self-styed monastic seekers of information, perhaps working for institutions with printing presses or transmitterds, to do some reporting .

Pretty crazy, I know. .

Insult To Hundreds Of Injuries

Chinese national in the US on a student visa, busted for leading a ring (one might say “racket” of iPhone thieves that stole over 1,000 smart phones (sometimes violently) worth over $800K, gets arrested…

The central figure behind what prosecutors called a roving network of robbers admitted to leading the scheme to steal cellphones in downtown Minneapolis and Dinkytown, drain their financial apps of money totaling more than $275,000 and then ship the phones overseas for sale.

Zhongshuang Su, aka Brandon Su, 33, of Minneapolis agreed to plead guilty to four amended felony counts of stolen property in connection with the operation that lasted roughly a year until charges against Su and his band of thieves were filed last September.

Su is accused of being the man known to others in the scheme as the “iPhone Man,” who bought the stolen phones and sent them to foreign buyers. In total, prosecutors believe Su shipped more than 1,100 phones to addresses in Hong Kong. Prosecutors put the value of those phones at more than $800,000.

…and gets a sentence that couldn’t even be failrly described as a slap on the wrist:

The plea agreement between the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and the defense calls for a 13-month sentence that would be set aside for three years and dismissal of the felony racketeering charges as long as he stays out of legal trouble. The prosecution also reserves the right to ask for Su to serve up to a year in the workhouse.

Someone trying to defend themselves against one of the thieves could easily have gotten a tougher sentence.

“A Conservative Is A Liberal Who’s Been Mugged”

That might not be the result of this episode – at least, I but this past Tuesday Shivanthi Sathanandan, a Minnesota state DFL executive who advocated defunding the police gets the living crap beating out of her by carjackers.

And yep, she was one of those DFLers::

In her June 2020 post, Sathanandan thanked two Minneapolis City Council members for their “radical leadership” in working to “dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.”

“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me,” she wrote.

This past Tuesay, Sathanandan it was in her own yard when…:

“Four very young men, all carrying guns, beat me violently down to the ground in front of our kids. The young men held our neighbors up at gunpoint when they ran over and tried to help me. All in broad daylight,” DFL Second Vice Chair Shivanthi Sathanandan wrote in a public Facebook post, which included a picture of her face after the alleged assault.

“Look at my face in the picture. This is the face of a mother who just had the sh$t beaten out of her. A mother whose only thought was, ‘let me run far enough and fight hard enough so that my kids have a chance to get away.’ This is the face of a mother who just listened to her four-year-old daughter screaming non-stop, her seven-year-old son wailing for someone to come help because bad guys are murdering his Mama in the backyard, her neighbors screaming in outrage … all while being beaten with guns and kicks and fists,” she said.

It’s not Sathanandan’s job to add that if any of those neighbors had responded with the kind of force that could have ended the assault, Mary Moriarty would likely have prosecuted them far more harshly than the carjackers themselves.

But unlike some previous victms, who’ve blamed “the system” and themselves, Sathanandan reaches a rational conclusion:

“And I have rage. These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS. Killing mothers. Giving babies psychological trauma that a lifetime of therapy cannot erase. With no hesitation and no remorse,” she said.

“We need to get illegal [!!! – Ed.] guns off of our streets, catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM,” she said. “Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.”

.

It’s natural – and in some cases appropriate, and in Sathanandan’s case documentably true. The DFL does in fact own the situation. And I do pile schadenfreud on the

But I’m going to urge people to take the opportunity to see the opportunity, here. Sathanandan may never become a law-and order conservative – but Minneapolis got where it is incrementally, and any improvement will be at least as incremental.

And if you’re so inclined, pray for those kids. The fruits of the politics of the parents shouldn’t be visited on the kids.

Much less their neighbors.

UPDATE. There is speculation that this is staged. Some are make a plausible case. The blood doesn’t look like any head laceration usually looks (and believe me, I’ve had a few), and she takes a pretty composed-looking photo for someone with a broken leg.

OTOH: the hoax, if it is one, benefits conservatives, and even the Frey administration, against whom the Minneapolis DFL is mustering money and votes.

Not saying that’s not plausible – but why?

Ambiguous

So we’re reliably informed that Downtown Minneapolis is back.

But that it desperately needs Target to force its workers back into the office.

Reporter Brianna Kelly spent months talking to downtown Minneapolis businesses about the flexible hybrid approach of downtown’s largest employer, and the impact it is having on the local economy.

“You know, everyone wants Target to be back; we need Target to be back,” Kelly said. “They’re a huge part of the entire ecosystem downtown.”

The story behind the story is this: if the wellbeing of Downtown Minneapolis is that dependent on a single employer, that whole “Minneapolis is a Cold Flint” comparison is looking better and better, and I don’t say that with any great joy.

Appropriation

Mike Norton the vice chair (and maybe acting chair, after this fiasco) tweeted this yesterday:

Mayor Mompants and the “Ban the Cops” City Council are “Conservative”, according to Mr. Norton.

Well, no .

“Less Communistic” works.

Ever Notice…

… how iconic brands in Minneapolis never find buyers? They always go from humming along to closing up shop for good?

Psycho Suzies tiki lounge may have been one of the most distinctive bars/restaurants in the city, that, for its many faults, as always been pretty creative on the food front.

It’s been a while since I’ve been there – although one of my most treasured memories is cleaning Bridget Cronin‘s vomit off my shoes during one of her birthday parties there. But every time I was ever there, it was packed, especially on gorgeous summer nights, where you could sit and look across the Mississippi River at the sparkling of gunfire from North Minneapolis.

You think it would be a hot property, including its branding, for someone.

But nooooo…

Psycho Suzie’s Motor Lounge announced it will permanently close on Aug. 19.

“For the past two decades we’ve welcomed you through our tiki laden jungle to enjoy tropical drinks, pizza pies, waterfront seating, and the company of new and old friends… but all good things must come to an end and this Psycho Suzi is ready to hang it up and put on her retirement hat,” said owner Leslie Bock, in a Facebook post.

So what Minneapolis social tradition will be next? City government has drawn a line in the Sand around the first Avenue, clearly – that place is escaped the apathy of the market. Thanks to city intervention a number of times.

The Dakota? God forbid.

Open Letter To The Mostly Peaceful Fireworks Kids Of Minneapolis

To: All You Kids Shooting Off Fireworks In Residential Neighborhoods
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: A Modest Proposal

I’m talking about you kids:

Now, we’ve got some people around the Twin Cities who’re chanting “relax – it’s just teenagers blowing of steam. It’s what teenagers do”.

I’ve noticed there’s about a 100% correlation between people who say that and people who wore masks along while walking down empty streets, and called the cops at the governor’s snitch line when they saw someone without a mask.

Speaking of which – here’s my proposal.

Shoot off all the fireworks you want – in the neighborhoods marked blue, below:

They’re the ones that voted “Yes” on defunding the police in 2021.

They’re the neighborhoods with an “In This House…” signs out front.

Please observe the following guidelines by color:

  • Brown, Tan, Olive: No fireworks.
  • Light blue: Firecrackers (individually or by the package)
  • Medium blue: Bottle rockets, up to and including screamers.
  • Dark blue: Everything you’ve got. Mortars, big Roman Candles, the works.

Deal?

That is all.

Vibraaaaant!

I am reliably informed that, after two weekends featuring Taylor Swift, Pride and Taste of Minnesota, downtown Minneapolis is back, baby!

So this must be a mistake.

Apparently we need a Super Bowl or monster truck rally downtown. Something.

Capitulation, Or Fighting For The Enemy?

City of Minneapolis will be closing the Stone Arch Bridge – one of the city’s iconic attractions, and one of the very nicest overviews there is anywhere – for the entiire Independence Day weekend:

This should help solve downtown’s crime problem.

In much the same way that France’s surrender solved that whole “German invasion” problem in 1940.

Solved!

The simultaneous human tsunamis of Pride and two nights of Taylor Swift saved downtown Minneapolis!

Here’s one of about 50 Twin Cities media stories to that effect – almost as if they were written in advance:

Besides the obvious economic benefit of having half a million people wandering about with purpose, big crowds (that aren’t there to riot, anyway) are generally pretty safe from most violent and property crime.

So the solution is clear.

Downtown Council needs to make Taylor Swift the house band at USBank Stadium, and turn Hennepin from 10th to Loring Park into a new “PrideLand” theme park.

Simple as.

The DFL Owns This

Parts of the Twin Cities housing market are doing very well.

Others…not so much:

“Nowhere have home prices fallen more in the past year than in Uptown Minneapolis — specifically the 55408 ZIP code that includes Lyn-Lake and part of Whittier — where closing prices last month were almost 51% less than what they were in April 2019.”

Amazing what three years of crime, ongoing “civil disturbances” and endemic disorder will do to stability.

Ghastly

The descriptions of the accident over the weekend that killed five MInneapolis women were bad enough.

Seeing it is another matter entirely:

I know it’s a trick of the light and angle and video – but it looks like the victims car is completely erased. It takes a lot to upset me. This did it.

Not sure how any jury seeing this video doesn’t go into the room with a serious bias against the driver…

…assuming it ever goes to trial. How sick is it that we have to preface all accounts of tragedies and atrocities in Minneapolis with a reference to “Moriarty Justice”.

And we do – because the driver, Derrick Thompson, has apparently already skated from one heinous traffic crime – a fact we learn on the 22nd and final paragraph:

Thompson has a long history of driving-related offenses, including multiple convictions for driving with a revoked or suspended license, according to state court and Department of Public Safety records. His license was reinstated in March 2023 and remained active at the time of the crash.

Which was five paragraphs below the fact that he is the son of former DFL representative John Thompson:

Though police have not publicly named the driver, two sources identified him as 27-year-old Derrick John Thompson, of Brooklyn Park. Public records indicate that he is the son of former state Rep. John Thompson, DFL-St. Paul. John Thompson did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Just as the sins of the father aren’t visited on the sons, a son’s crime isn’t a father’s fault. The fact that Thompson the Younger apparently benefitted from revolving door justice.

But the dead are Somali, in Hennepin County. I doubt even Moriarty can ignore that.