Premise, accepted as a given:  Most government taxation and spending, especially in one-party cities like Minneapolis and Saint Paul (and, really, in de facto one-party states like Minnesota) exists primarily to take wealth from the producing class and give it…not so much to people who need it as much as to the political class.

With that accepted as a given (and I do accept it as a given, and so do you, if you think about it even a little), can it be even a tiny surprise that the same week brought us both this story…:

Legislators approved $35 million this year with $17.5 million ongoing to address racial and economic disparities, particularly in north Minneapolis.

…and this one?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In the olden days, public sector jobs were filled by patronage, which led to massive incompetence and frequent turnover.  These employees could get away with lousy service without repercussion because their jobs didn’t depend on customer service, they depended on remaining in favor.

 Later, public sector jobs are filled by civil service procedures to avoid nepotism and favoritism, hopefully resulting in more competent employees.  These employees couldn’t give the public lousy service because they’d be disciplined or even fired.

 In states like Minnesota, public sector jobs became union jobs with the adoption of the Public Employment Labor Relations Act in 1984.  They’re still filled by civil service exams but now they’re union jobs so employees can get away with lousy service without repercussion because it’s so difficult to discipline or fire a public union employee.  Local media attention or legislative scrutiny often is required before action is taken.

 I once submitted documents to the County Recorder but they were rejected.  The phone conversation went something like this: “Why were my documents rejected?  We can’t give you legal advice.  I don’t want legal advice, I want to know what’s wrong with my documents so I can fix them to get them recorded.  Read the statute.  I did read the statute, I still can’t see anything wrong with my documents.  Consult a lawyer.  I AM A LAWYER AND AS FAR AS I CAN TELL THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH MY DOCUMENTS SO WHAT’S THE PROBLM?  I’ll refer you to my supervisor.” 

 I don’t know whether that’s incompetence, malice, stupidity, or just an idiotic policy, but it did not delight the customer.

 And in the federal government, it’s even worse: public sector jobs are union jobs, supposedly filled by civil service process except the bosses are political appointees so the workers actually selected to fill positions tend to mirror the boss’s political views.  The federal government workforce leans Democrat so they have no personal qualms about treating Tea Party fundraisers less well than Move On fundraisers, for example.  Massive media attention and Congressional inquiries were insufficient to motivate the IRS to discipline anybody.

 Maybe this will get their attention.

 Joe Doakes

Something will have to, someday.  Perhaps it’ll be DC collapsing.

Wendy’s follows McDonalds in moving to automated kiosks in its thousand and thousands of restaurants:

After New York City and California mandated $15 minimum-wage laws, fast-food chain Wendy’s reacted, announcing Thursday its plans to make available self-serving kiosks in its 6,000-plus restaurants across the country by year’s end.

In addition to using the technology to cut down on labor costs, Wendy’s President Todd Penegor noted on the company’s quarterly conference call, that some of its franchise locations have been raising prices to offset the minimum-wage increase, according to Investor’s Business Daily.

“Wendy’s Penegor said company-operated stores, only about 10 percent of the total, are seeing wage inflation of 5 percent to 6 percent, driven both by the minimum wage and some by the need to offer a competitive wage ‘to access good labor,’” IBD reported.

Why, it’s almost as if you’d think the left would have to know that artificially raising the minimum wage without increases in skill and productivity is going to increase unemployment among low-skill, low-wage workers, thus increasing dependence on government (thus increasing employment for government workers and their unions) or something.

You might recall Minneapolis City Councilor Alonda Cano; last winter, she was abusing her access to city data to “shame” people who criticized her support for Black Lives Matter.  Then, when called for alleged laziness by (of all outlets) the City Pages, she…

…well, that actually brings us up to this week:

Tuesday evening, it was Cano’s turn to join the public conversation, doing so in the form of a Facebook post on her city council page. Cano wrote it was “hurtful and disappointing” to read the words “lazy,” “always late,” and “clueless” used to describe her work ethic on the council.

“It is important to illuminate,” Cano went on, “that these words, when used to frame women and people of color, carry a history of coded language that serve to create negative racial stereotypes.”

That could be.

Those words, when referring to someone who’d rather grandstand than learn their damn job, are also not-coded-at-all terms to refer to lazy, inconsiderate people who don’t do their homework, whatever their skin color.

Cano wrote that the negative story “weighed on me heavily,” and she went back and forth on whether she should respond to it. After all, she and her south Minneapolis constituents in the Ninth Ward have far greater concerns: wage theft, slumlords, a lack of paid sick time for workers, even working moms.

Which Cano, apparently, isn’t doing jack for.

“However,” Cano continued, “when loaded and biased attacks occur, it is vital that we stand up and speak the truth. In this case, this story was racist, sexist, and it was an attempt to smear all of the things I stand for.

Well, no.  It was an attempt to tell the public that Cano – who reportedly has ambitions to run for Mayor or the Legislature – isn’t doing a very good job, when her job doesn’t involve granstanding, or taking spiffy trips on the taxpayer’s dime.

I want you to know that I am unabashed in my commitment to continuing to advance a racial and social justice agenda no matter the backlash.”

Let’s take a moment to go over what just happened.  Alondra Cano – an elected member of a power bloc with absolute one-party control of a major city, a person with in effect a lifetime sinecure either in government or non-profits for her and (likely) her entire family, one who wields the kind of power that mere citizens don’t even know how to dream of – is trying to paint herself as a victim.

Cano – like Nekima Levy-Pounds, another person with immense power and privilege herself – is perfectly fine using her position to shame critics who don’t buy newsprint by the trainload; when someone – even the lowly City Pages – comes along and hits her from the level, she cries “victimization”.  

Question, Minneapolis:  Do you deserve better, or not?

The government of Minneapolis under the last (note to Mitchell: find the number of consecutive DFL mayors the city has had) has observed that old Scarsdale ritual:”Take care of the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves!”

And it’s working about as well as it does for any entitled Insurance salesperson’s spouse:

According to the city Finance Department, Minneapolis is on the hook for about $1.6 billion in debt and operational costs for the convention center, the Vikings stadium, and the Timberwolves arena over the next 20 years.
Broken down, that’s an annual three checks adding up to $80 million, money that’s off the table for paving East Franklin Avenue, fixing swings at Kenwood Park, or financing low-interest business loans on West Broadway.

Instead of economic development, a city chose rich man’s stadiums.

That also explains why the City Council today is expected to approve spending another $800 million to fix crumbling roadways and haggard parks over the next 20 years.

Simply put, a lot of money is already gone

The funny part; while the situation in Minneapolis no doubt will spawn a few instant budget hawks, five will get you 10 the thin trickle of media that do bother to cover the story will be back shilling for the DFL by Labor Day.

…and, lets be honest, inevitable.

When I was a kid, the world’s social justice warrior crowd warned us that the world was headed for inevitable catastrophic famine.  Some of the very voices behind “global warming” today – Paul Ehrlich springs to mind – warned (and profited greatly from warning) us that India would be down to under 100 million people by 1990, and that Africa was going be pretty much revert to nature, its human inhabitants all starved out.  Even the US was going to be the subject of “inevitable” food riots by the mid-eighties.

Naturally, the only possible remedy was to socialize the world economy.

Today?

People are wondering with a straight face if we have “too much food”, as the world has more overweight than malnourished people for the first time in history.

I fully expect to see a Kyoto Treaty for fat, sooner than later.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Ron Fournier, political reporter for National Journal, claims Hillary should not be prosecuted because there’s a higher standard to prosecute someone who’s running for public office.
Well, no, there isn’t. But maybe there should be?
Let’s have a show of hands – who remembers a Democrat prosecutor announcing an indictment against a Republican candidate just in time to influence the election, only to quietly drop the charges after the election, or have them thrown out in disgust by a higher court? Any of these names ring a bell: Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska; Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas; Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisconsin?
There’s a law that politicians can’t be arrested while they’re doing their jobs, under the theory of Parlimentary Privilege. But what about candidates? What about their supporters and contributors? Google the phrase “Democrat Lawfare” for an eyeful of interesting examples showing how one party abuses the power of the judiciary for partisan political advantage. Maybe we should rein in that power?
Joe Doakes

But that’d involve giving up power.

And Democrats fight for power the same way Republicans fight for unborn babies and the right to defend oneself.

Last week, social conservatives on social media vented their disgust at a mother whose son had been shot and killed in an armed robbery attempt; the woman infamously asked how it was her son was supposed to get money for clothes, being in “the hood” and all.

The landed punditry pummeled the mother; with such an upbringing, how was the kid supposed to grow up? was a common refrain.

I’m not going to bag on a distraught mother.  She’ll have an eternity to wonder about what she did or didn’t do wrong as a mom.  I’m not going to chuckle at grief, even if it provides what seems to be a window into a worldview utterly foreign to mine.

And because there’s a much more galling example of corrosive entitlement happening on a much bigger, but less dramatic, scale.

The Detroit Way:  A dozen current and former Detroit school administrators received the equivalent of federal indictments for bribery and kickbacks totaling over a million dollars over 13 years.   The administrators allegedly worked with a crooked vendor to take kickbacks for school supplies that weren’t delivered, funneling funds through dummy companies set up to try to fool auditors.

That case will wend its merry way through the courts for many more years, no doubt.

But if I may, I’ll ask the world’s collective dogs to leave the grieving mother of the late robber alone, and take a gander at this ripe turd of entitlement (with emphasis added):

“It’s pitiful that they’re going after principals who are probably just doing what they need to do even if it might be a little bit unethical in order to provide the students in their schools with the supplies and materials that they need that district and the state should be providing us,” teacher Cathy Brackett said. “They should be going after the big thieves who have come into the district under the guise of emergency managers and consultants who have skimmed not just thousands of dollars but millions of dollars away from our students and just move on to their next gig, seemingly without repercussions.”

While Ms. Brackett is right to a point – the educational consulting racket is basically an under-the-table wealth transfer from the taxpayers to the political class, which in Detroit means Democrat hangers-on – it’s that emphasized bit that made me forget all about the robber’s mom’s outburst; people skimming taxpayer money are “probably” doing it for their kids’ benefit?  Read it for yourself.

You’ll notice that this happens only in cities where one-party rule has ossified into a permanent political overclass – which happens only in Democrat-run cities, as it happens.

The quote “democracy can only survive until the majority discovers they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury” gets attributed to a lot of people; over the years, I’ve seen De Tocqueville and Jefferson, among may others (it’s actually Alexander Tytler).

But what matters at this juncture in history is not so much who said it, or even that it was said.  What matters is that we’ve hit that point.

The “Blue Model” of government – first vote to provide goodies at public expense; then turn them into “entitlements” granted by the force of law that can’t be reasonably undone – holds sway in much of this country (including Minnesota); it’s done so for so long, entire generations think it’s the norm.  Much of the American populace can’t imagine government that isn’t in the entitlement biz; it’s the same part of the populace that seems to think that these “entitlements” are funded by gold coins borne down from heaven on the backs of unicorns (or “taxes on the 1%”, which are about the same thing).

It’s unsustainable.  And that which can not be sustained, won’t be.   The next case?  Illinois:

The Supremes have spoken: The Illinois state constitution is a suicide pact. Less than two years after invalidating an adjustment to state workers’ budget-busting healthcare benefits, the highest court in Illinois has ruled unconstitutional the City of Chicago’s last-ditch efforts to stabilize its woefully underfunded pension system. The Wall Street Journalreports:
“The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a plan to cut future retirement benefits and boost employee contributions for Chicago city workers, undercutting a pillar of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s strategy to stabilize one of the nation’s most troubled pension systems.

The justices ruled the changes would violate the rights of city workers and retirees protected under the Illinois constitution. The Emanuel administration had argued that the changes came as part of an agreement under which the city would increase its annual contributions to two of the city’s four pension funds to ensure they remain solvent.”

So to pay for the golden contracts of generations of retired city workers, the City of Chicago is going to have to raise taxes, cut spending on services (like police, fire, and education – and can you imagine an exquisitely expsensive and utterly failed system like the Chicago schools, with less money?) or, most likely, both.   This will drive out established businesses (but for corporate headquarters, of course; CEOs love the urban amenities and are willing to pay the taxes on one building; not the one where the blue and pink-collar proles work, naturally) and inhibit new ones, and worsen the plight of the city’s poor.

It’s called “the Blue Model”.

It’s also called “Detroit, Chapter 1”.

Detroit is in Chapter 4, now.  There is no Chapter 5.

Court rules that the IRS acted in bad faith, targeted Tea Party groups:

A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency from the very tea party groups it targeted.

The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Departmentlawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting — by fighting the disclosure.

My greatest dream is to see those responsible frog-walked into a paddy wagon.   Like the “Clinton Indictment”, it’ll never happen – but hope is what it’s all about.

The following post is going to sound kinda conspiracy-theory-ish.  That makes me a little queasy – but hear it out.

The headlines over the weekend were all about Trump.

As in, all of them.  Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, even Hillary and Bernie, could barely buy a headline; as they used to say, they “couldn’t get arrested”…

…which, for one of the candidates, is suddenly not such a quaint expression.

And while Republicans more or less dropped the “Trump is really a stealth Democrat” meme a long time ago, this weekend started me wondering.

Lesser Of Three Goods:  Let’s say for the moment that Trump is a sincere Republicans.  As we’ve seen, he’s also the Republican that Hillary would rather face (assuming the polls are legitimate).   They keep the focus on him,

So anything that helps Trump to the nomination, presuming the polls are legit, benefits Hillary.

Distracted:  When was the last time you heard anyone outside the conservative alt-media talking about Hillary’s email server, much less Benghazi?

Follow The Money:  The “protests” have largely been associated with Bernie Sanders’ supporters…

…but have gotten ample financial support from the cabal of liberal plutocrats and their shills that’ve been working for Hillary Clinton for nearly 20 years, now?

Connect The Dots, People: So the “protests” simultaneously promote a candidate the Democrats would prefer to face, starve the dangerous ones of media coverage during the heart of primary season, keep the media’s attention off of the marching band of skeletons banging on drums in Hillary’s closet, and provide a couple of layers of separation between Hillary and the protesters, even providing another entire campaign to blame if needed?

I mean, yes, it sounds all Art Bell-y – but isn’t that the beauty of it?

…that a Trump presidency would be a total loss, there’s always this.

Of course, I believe all those useless mouths will walk away from their federal pensions abojt the time Rosie O’Donnell moves to Canada.

But a guy can dream.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Which of these Obama administration gun control proposals is NOT a thinly disguised money-laundering scheme to give federal dollars via grants to Liberals who will donate it right back to the DFL?

Joe Doakes

Is that a trick question?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One of the keys to achieving a healthier citizenry is providing everyone with affordable (meaning subsidized) health insurance.  Naturally, since the government is paying for most of it, the government needs the data supporting the billings.  So all your medical records belong to the government.  But it’s okay, the data is totally secure, just like the personnel records at the Department of Homeland Security.

Joe Doakes

In all things, we must reinforce failure and reward incompentence.

With government, anyway.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Sanders clobbered Hillary in New Hampshire, but they wind up with the same number of delegates because Hillary knows how to play the insider game from long ago.  The most hated woman in America could still ascend to the throne.

joe doakes

That’s the conventional wisdom.

My two cents?  The Democrats need Sanders to win.  Hillary can’t pardon herself.

Convictions gained through official misconduct; it’s not just for Manitowoc County Wisconsin any more.

Among those exonerated, 58 had been convicted of homicide, including five people who had been sentenced to death, it said. About three-quarters of the homicide exonerations included official misconduct, it said.

Another large group involved drug possession. Many times people held in custody falsely confessed to a crime to avoid a trial where they faced much longer sentences, the report said.

Texas was the top state for exonerations, propelled by conviction integrity units set up in its most populous counties. The state known for its tough approach on crime has also been a national leader in prosecutorial reform.

“For the integrity of the system, it is the right thing to do,” said Inger Chandler, head of the Harris County District Attorney’s Conviction Review Section, where there were 42 exonerations in 2015.

As long as prosecutors’ employment depends on politics, our “Justice” system will have a noxious layer of endemic injustice baked in.

SCENE:  The Saint Paul City Council chambers.  Present are:

• Mayor Chris COLEMAN
• Ward 1 councilor Bernadette SANDERS
• Ward 2 councilor Benny TOMUSOLLINI
• Ward 3 councilor Francine BURNS
• Ward 4 councilor Evita P. EVITA
• Ward 5 councilor Hugh GOCHAVEZ
• Ward 6 councilor L. A. PDOG
• Ward 7 councilor Katherine ANTSY

COLEMAN gavels the meeting to order.

COLEMAN:  May the meeting come to order.

BURNS: (loudly clears her throat)

COLEMAN:  Sorry.  May the meeting please come to order, by your indulgent leave?

(more…)

Russia bars George Soros’ “Open Society Project” from Russia.

A Berg Administration would recognize them as a bigger long-term danger to this country than ISIS or Al Quaeda.

The amount of money and property seized by county attorneys and police in this country has exceeded the amount stolen in all reported burglaries.

There’s a school bonding referendum on the ballot this Tuesday; the district wants $250 million, on top of the huge bond they got two years ago, on top of all their state money.

There are campaigns, both against the bill and, naturally, for it.

Over the weekend, the Washington County Watchdog facebook page tripped upon a couple of giggly north-Suburban bobbleheads chuckling about stealing “Vote No” campaign signs – or, in one case, having her kids do it.

The Watchdog confirmed that one of the women is affiliated with/employed by the “Vote Yes” campaign.

JoeDoakes from Como Park notes the same thing I did yesterday:

Global warming alarmists lie with statistics to panic the public, hoping they’ll react in fear instead of reason.

This article from Powerline explains how to make a chart look scary by changing the scale.

I think gun controllers do it, too. I’ll look for examples.

Joe Doakes

You can pretty much name the issue:  “war on women”; “Obamacare will lower the deficit”; Obama has added less to the debt than any president since the War; more gun laws equal less crime; the science is settled.

The Big Lie is a key part of the Democrat Party’s approach; to make up an alternate reality for their low-information base, without fear of being “fact-checked” by a media that is their PR agency Praetorian Guard.

Good old Saint Paul.

The business economy just continues to spiral down the vortex; it’s schools are a disaster for African-Americans and other minority students; it’s choking on traffic, and obsessed with choking it further.

But apparently none of that is so serious that the city, in its infinite wisdom, isn’t going to try to socialize… Garbage collection.

And the city, having learned so much for watching the Met Council jam down the Green Line, is going about getting its way the way it always does; anyway it has to to get what it wants.

A reader from Merriam park emails:

Gotta love this report– they received survey responses from 2,000 residents and conclude that based on those responses, “a majority of St Paul want organized trash collection.” They’ve also concluded that immigrants and minorities have too much trouble making decisions to make a good decision in choosing a trash hauler, so this is better for them. Of course, it doesn’t appear that they asked too many in the poorer neighborhoods of St Paul, since their map (see .pdf through link below) indicates that more than 800 responses came from Mac Groveland/ Summit Hill zip code.

The reports are at the link above.

But here’s the map of the survey responses:

So the “survey” drew 2,000 responses – and if we take each of the different “color” bands at their half-way point, it’s fair to estimate that 70-80% of them came from the city’s four most alpaca-wearing, Subaru-driving, NPR-listening, Jon Stewart-worshipping, Saint Olaf-alumni-ing, upper-middle-class, white, government-union-or-academia-employed, “Progressive” zip codes.

Seems pretty even-handed to me.

To:  The Democrat Party
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Campaign 2016

All,

We’re heading toward a presidential election.

You’re facing a field with a highly-accomplished woman, two Latinos, a black man, two very accomplished surgeons, two CEOs, a couple of Horatio Alger stories, a former Solicitor-General of the United States (that means “a really, really smart lawyer”), a former federal prosecutor who beat the Mob like a bongo drum, and a couple of governors who’ve actually accomplished great things (albeit one fewer than I’d have liked, all things considered).

You’ve got a governor who enthusiastically led a failed state, a career senator who’s famous for his malaprops, a retreaded hippie who would run the economy on unicorn farts, and a “feminist icon” who is where she is precisely because she married an up-and-comer, no different than any other Mad Men-era Scarsdale housewife, and has spent the past 40-odd years enabling him no less than the most abjectly-subjugated burqua-clad Pakistani second wife.

This is the paragraph where I normally throw in the punch line.  But I really don’t need one, do I?

That is all.

I attended the Black Lives Matter “rally”/demonstration in Saint Paul yesterday.

Or the end of it, anyway; the protesters blocked the Green Line and all traffic on University at Lexigton starting at 9:30 AM, and I got there around 11:30 – in plenty of time for the die-in, a bunch of speeches, and all sorts of chanting.

Uni at Lexington, looking northwest to southeast through spilled coffee. Or maybe a dab of salsa. Or hash brown grease. Not sure. You can sorta make out a cop car on the left; beyond it, the Lexington Avenue Green Line station. The actual protest is out there. Honest.

The bad news?  I brought my camera; I also apperently dripped some coffee on the lens, which coagulated in place, leaving me with really bad photos:

Looking across Uni, cops on the left, protesters behind the crud.

My photos aren’t clear.  I get it.

But they were about as clear as the rationale for the protest.

The stated reason for the protest was to mess with people using the Green Line to get to the Vikings home opener.

But – and let’s leave aside for a moment that Metro Transit routed buses around the stoppage during the entire course of the protest, and had additional buses standing by to carry passengers past the protest – there’s the little matter that…

…no more than a dozen Vikings fans actually park east of Lexington and take the train to downtown Minneapolis.

Speaking of numbers, I counted the following when I was there:

• Perhaps 75 protesters, including speakers.
• Of them, 15-18 were African-American. 50-60 were white.
• There were 14 police squad cars – one state patrol, one Transit cop, the rest Saint Paul.  They blocked University and Lexington a block away on all sides of the protest.
• There were also four mounted cops and six cops on bike.

The police didn’t outnumber the protesters – but the protesters outnumbered the cops by maybe two or three to one.

So why “protest the NFL” in a place where the NFL and the Vikings will be the absolute last people to notice it?    Why didn’t they hold the protest on the Washington Avenue bridge, blocking the many, many people who take the train up from the Mall of America area from getting to the game, and actually getting the NFL’s attention?

Because – this is my theory, here – the Saint Paul wing of BLM isn’t about protesting power structures.  It’s about 2016, and trying to keep African-Americans fired up to vote in a year where the Democrat party’s entire slate is geriatric white people.