Category: St. Paul
-
Hacked
Somebody hacked the City of Saint Paul: What is it about information technology that makes every level of Minnesota government so very very bad at it? It would seem Mayor Carter could have diverted some time from setting up college funds and yakking about Universal Basic Income to make sure the city’s patching was up…
-
More Vibrancy!
Not sure if I’m getting tired of Trump winning – but I’ve had enough of Saint Paul losing. The Cub on University Avenue is closing after several decades: The store at 1440 University Ave. W. will close its doors to the public on Aug. 2, and 96 store employees will be laid off starting on…
-
The Devil Is In The Details
So, the Saint Paul City Council appears to be rolling back its stupid, ruinous “rent control” ordinance… …sort of. But – only the buildings built after 2004? I’m no expert, but this sounds to me like it’s a plan to: Make it impossible to pay the upkeep and taxes on older buildings, and so to…
-
Ex-Cel
XCel Energy’s sponsorship deal with Saint Paul’s major arena is over: All I know is that after twenty years of calling it “The X”, the new sponsor is going to have to be Excedrin, Microsoft Excel, X, Space X, or Ex-Lax, or I’m never going to remember it.
-
The Mean Girls Club Strikes Again
Saint Paul’s much-ballyhooed all-boss-lady City Council not only can’t do its job. It breaks the law while doing it. Jane McClure is a long-time writer for the Highland Villager. And as she points out, it seems the Council is walking all over the state’s Open Meetings Law: The rule of law is the first casualty…
-
Girl Brawl
If it seems like just yesterday the national media was swooning over Saint Paul’s city council – the first all-female city council in the US, we were told – it’s because it practically was just yesterday that the entire establishment was swooning over them. They’re women, donchaknow. And I’m not gonna say I predicted this, but…
-
All That Doesn’t Glitter In Saint Paul
Saint Paul’s “Tony Soprano”-style trash collection system – which has morphed over the past decade from individually-contracted vendors to a dozen or so vendors allocated across the city by a city plan that drove most of them out of Saint Paul, to now one single contracted vendor that sucked up to the city properly, is…
-
Open Letter To Mayor Carter
To: Mayor Melvin Carter, Saint PaulFrom: Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant and Human ATMRe: Election Denier? Mayor, You said this yesterday: Quick point of order, yerroner – the rest of us pay taxes, too. Lots and lots of them. And we won the election. In an electoral-college landslide, in fact. Aren’t you glad the Senate still…
-
Saint Paul: Take The “W” With Fries
A friend of the blog emails: I am equally surprised. I didn’t expect the Council to resist the Highland Park Prog Lifestyle mafia. Well, everyone but Jalali. She continues to fail to impress. Which is a fairly evergreen remark.
-
“We Own This City”
For a while, after winning complete lopsided electoral sweeps in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, the DFL victory parties would break out into chanting the line in the title. Ownership has its privileges, as they way – but local DFLers sure seem to be squiggling away from any responsibility for that ownership. A friend of the…
-
Thirty Years Ago On The East Side
Hard to believe it’s been thirty years since Guy Harvey Baker – a Gulf War Marine veteran with, clearly, mental illness issues – killed officers Ron Ryan, Tim Jones, and a police dog named Laser (story from 2014). The PiPress had a fairly good retrospective of the events – with one crucial omission: Ryan, 26,…
-
Your Tax Dollars Hard At Work
Mayor Melvin Carter – who makes $132K a year – thanks “the President”… For wiping out his student debt transferring his student debt to America’s plumbers, truck drivers, waitresses and warehouse pickers: I’m not sure what bothers me more: Graft is bad. Redundant graft is worse.
-
Perhaps Saint Paul’s Sole Political Upside. Sort Of.
Minneapolis is increasingly run by showy, shrill, demogogic “Democrats Socialists of America” radicals intent on rebuilding the city in their image. Saint Paul, as long as I can recall but even moreso in the past 15 years has been run by an informal assembly of white NIMBYs from the various Parks (Highland, Merriam, Irvine, Saint…
-
Little Boxes Made Of Ticky-Tack
A friend of the blog emails: I don’t know how I feel about this one. On one hand, I don’t think that what the developer wants to do is a bad design. I’m sick of the developers squeezing in tiny 800 square feet apartments everywhere and charging high rents and making places artificially trendy. Also,…
-
The Thing That Wouldn’t Die
A friend of the blog emails: I was always afraid the activists had too much control, [the FOB’s spouse] was confident that the state wouldn’t do something this stupid. But, it is getting talked about in mainstream media now. It’s probably really going to happen, isn’t it? The FOB is talking about the “Plan” being…
-
Precisely As Predicted
“Go ahead, tear down a couple of stores that were half of the commercial heart of the Midway”, said all the people who don’t live in the Midway. “It’ll bring hordes of soccer fans in from their “Urban Life Theme Park” homes in Marcy Holmes and Longfellow over to pre-game at the local bars, and…
-
The Gift That Keeps Giving
If it’s a year ending in a number, Checkerboard Pizza on the East Side of Saint Paul is back in the news for less than uttelry savory reasons. And as a Midway homer, it behooves me to point out that, name and signage similarities notwithstanding, the ongoing reality show that is the East Side Checkboard…
-
Fully Fungible
A friend of the blog emails: How can St Paul Teachers be voting to strike for more money? Weren’t Minnesota schools fully funded? They left themselves a pretty clever out. It’s fiendish genius, really. Also destroys education, and contributes to the destruction of a civil society, but tomayto tomahto.
-
The Usual Suspects
Grand Avenue in Saint Paul. It was gentrified well over forty years ago – before the term really existed. It’s been one of Saint Paul’s most durable commercial corridors since as long as I’ve lived here, and then some. And it’s been having trouble lately. Well, parts of it have. We’re told that some parts…
-
Meet The New Boss. Same As The Old Boss
So, Saint Paul has a new city council. Sort of. Just like the old city council, the new one treats the knobs and levers of government power as their toy and playground. They’re just a little more overt about it: And in terms of waving “Progressive” bloody sheets about in public? Again – same as…
-
Saint Small
SCENE. Mitch BERG is leaving a small cafe. Avery LIBRELLE is walking in. BERG is too tired to care and doesn’t try to evade or escape the encounter. LIBRELLE: Mer… BERG: Cut to the f***ing chase, Avery. LIBRELLE: In “One MInnesota! (TM) “, we are all prospering in a future where we boldly stride forward…
-
Anniversary
Today is the 82nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor. For those who observe. As I often have over this past few decades, I call out the fact that the first shots at Pearl Harbor were fired by a crew of Navy Reservists from Saint Paul, who’d been mobilized earlier in the year as part of Roosevelt’s…
-
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…
-
I Heard It On The NARN
Mike Casey is running for the GOP nomination in CD4. Jim Schulz, former MN Attorney General candidate, is with the Minnesota Private Business Council. And here’s today’s music list: