Category Archives: St. Paul

Articles about Saint Paul – a beautiful city with boundless character, beset by a deeply stupid government.

Other Peoples Money

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Back when I worked in downtown Saint Paul, I commuted down Summit Avenue.

There’s a bike lane down the entire length of the street. And while the condition of the lane is the same as the condition of the street itself (I’m looking at you, Summit and Oakland) it’s already one of the most beautiful urban corridors in the city.

Let’s review: for the price of the paint it took to create it, two-way bike lanes co-exist with two lanes of traffic each way, down a gorgeous parkway. It’s how biking should be.

“The City of Saint Paul” wants to spend $`12 million to build raised lanes on both side of Summit, reducing the street to one lane each way. And by “the City of Saint Paul”, I mean a thin, entitled, smug, innumerate veneer of smug upper-middle-class members of the laptop class – the peolple who run the city.

The city can’t hire cops. Its streets are a disaster. Every year, we hesitate to call the snow-plowing “the worst ever” because that merely temptes the next year.

And, make no mistake – the fact that this story is being publicized means the decision has been made. Oh, here will be “public hearings” and “listening sessions” – which are stamps on the procedural ticket to show they’ve done their due diligence before doing what they wanted to do anyway.

But speaking as a biker, I’d like to have a word with Zack Mensinger.

Stuck On Marginally Less Stupid

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A friend of the blog emails:

Saint Paul mayor is pitching a 1% sales tax to increase revenue to repair roads. People say the awful shape of the roads is the reason there are no businesses in Saint Paul “negatively impacts the mobility, safety, and access to the businesses that do so much to grow our community.”

I have some thoughts on this-

A) Does repair roads mean automatic bike lane on any street that this money touches for repair? Because that has been the norm lately, despite what businesses were asking for.

Saint Pauli has one huge advantage in this area: it has Minneapolis next door. If it’s just a little less crazy than Minneapolis, it flies under the radar.

So. yes – I’m sure there will be bike lanes on any street this money touches. But fire hydrants won’t be replaced by EV charging stations [1].

See how that works?

B) Before we go with the 1% sales tax, can we tax and charge all of those multi-unit apartment buildings more if they aren’t adding adequate parking for their tenets? The street parking definitely has an affect on the condition of the streets all year, but especially during snow plowing season.

The city’s mission to make driving an untenable lifestyle choice is proceeding according to pan. . But I can totally see the city taxing multi-unit buildingis 1% more if they have inadequate parking. And 5% if they have adequate parking. Because that sends the right message…

C) As for the actual 1% sales tax, sadly, I’m trying to figure out how this will actually affect me since most of the business that I used to support in Saint Paul have already been chased away.

I’m trying to remember the last time I went to a Saint Paul business that isn’t a restaurant. It’s probably been a few years since I even bought non-Asian groceries here.

[1] Minneapolis hasn’t actually done this yet. Just wait.

A Mostly Peaceful Year In Saint Paul

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While people focus on Minneapolis’s ongoing decay, Saint Paul just broke its homicide record:

And there’s plenty of time to run up the score before New Years.

Remember – in 2016, there were 81 homicides in the entire state – 30 in Minneapolis, and (IIRC) 18 in Saint Paul.

Hard to believe Saint Paul is the sane city…

Body Count

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Two people murdered at downtown Saint Paul’s Central Avenue transit station on Monday night:

Officers responded about 8:30 p.m. to the corner of Fifth and Cedar streets, where they found two people suffering from apparent gunshot wounds in the stairway/elevator structure that connects the skyway to the Green Line Central Station light rail stop, according to Metro Transit Police spokesman Drew Kerr.

Both of the wounded people were taken to a nearby hospital, but they both later died, Kerr said.

Another man was murdered on the same station’s platform last spring.

The “Transit Memorial Day” post next June is going to be a doozy.

For The Children

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The number of assaults on teachers in classrooms.

The superintendent’s salary.

The achievement gap.

Two of those numbers are getting worse. One of them is getting better.

Any guesses?

Here you go:

There is, of course, a highly competitive market for Big city schools superintendents. The market for “top” candidates is incredibly competitive, and the salaries show it.

I’ve been trying to figure out why for a couple decades now. All of them talk about metrics that improve, but year over year things always get worse.

I’m trying to figure out any other field were actual accomplishment plays no factor in skyrocketing salaries.

Electioneering

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One of my personal traditions is, whenever I see someone in an unopposed race on the ballot, and I’d rather not vote for them or leave the spot blank, I will write in one of my pets.

I think today’s Ramsey county commission race leaves is just such a choice; Ren Moran, or my cat.And so…:

If not now, when? If not him, what other animal?

Emptiness Is A Form Of Resilience, I Guess

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From 2006-2010, I worked at a job in downtown Saint Paul – on Wabasha, as luck would have it.

Wabasha had escaped the worst of the ravages of “Urban Renewal” of the 1950s-’60s, so it wasn’t a completely sterile, dessicated cement canyon, like Minnesota or Cedar.

But the 80s through the 2000s certainly had not treated it well, as whatever little non-government foot traffic there was on non-hockey/Ordway nights dried up. So while it’s not the depression-inducing brutalist hellscape that reigns from Minnesota over to Jackson, it was still pretty sad when I worked there, and the pandemic and Ecolab relocating to the Travelers building hasn’t helped.

A friend of the blog emails:

I travel quite a bit. Sometimes I travel by plane and when I get to my destination, I just walk or take taxis and transit everywhere. I have been to places far more dense than Saint Paul. Those places where I have traveled always have street level shops, restaurants, actual businesses that bring people out. Those places, in addition to having a larger number of people on sidewalks also have a large amount of automobile traffic. They have quite a few parking ramps as well. But, Saint Paul and Minneapolis is the only place that I have been that seems to have a plethora of vacant buildings and parking ramps, yet thinks the reason the downtown is “not people scale” is because it was lacking some sort of bike lane or “traffic calming.”

This section of Wabasha that our Resiliency Officer Stark thinks is so wonderfully suited for people is just one example of many. What is a bike lane going to prove on a deserted street? Stark will, of course, likely blame cars as the reason no one is riding their bikes past parking ramps. Then, the city will buy the ramps and close them. And still, people won’t ride their bikes past vacant buildings. Meanwhile, suburbs that I drive to, because there’s limited shopping in Saint Paul, seem to be thriving with businesses, housing developments, and yes, even sidewalks and bike lanes with people on them. Why are Democrats and far left urbanists determined to destroy our city?

I’m completely at a loss.

Government Of Merriam Park NIMBYs, By Merriam Park NIMBYs And For Merriam Park NIMBYs

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The sentence from the title isn’t officially in whatever passes for a “constitution“ for the city of Saint Paul.

But it might as well be.

The neighborhood – southwest of Allianz Stadium, south of the freeway and west of Snelling – is the home of an awful lot of ELCA-haired “progressive“ with boundless spare time for nattering on about politics.

Most everything corrosive and stupid about politics in Saint Paul gestates in Merriam Park. It was where the smoking ban – which crushed bars in Saint Paul, before the ban went state wide Dash was conceived. It’s where the decades of waffling about what to do with the old Snelling Avenue bus barn got the energy behind its lack of energy (before giving the property away to a billionaire to build a soccer stadium). Support for light rail down the middle of University Avenue, with stops every half mile (as opposed to a route that would’ve made more sense)? Ranked choice voting?

Rent control?

If it’s a stupid idea that benefited only upper middle class, college educated white progressives, it started in Merriam Park.

“Including Saint Paul’s “Tony Soprano“ trash collection system?

What do you think?

A friend of the blog emails:

Illegal dumping did not go down, it went up in Saint Paul’s mafia organized trash collection system. Some say the promise of city wide trash collection was not met, but I still remember the promise of city wide trash collection was so that the elite, privileged Merriam Park residents wouldn’t have their deck sitting, coffee sipping morning ruined by the awful sound of 2 trash trucks running down their alley. To that end, the promise has been met.

But, illegal dumping hasn’t gone down? Huh, did anyone seriously believe it would? I know that I didn’t. The dumping that I see tends to be by renters moving out who aren’t dumping, per say, but offering free on curbside, oexcept no one wants the free on curbside stuff. It is mostly college student renters, since they move the most. Maybe the city should start requiring landlords renting to college students to have fully furnished apartments. (Strike that, let’s not give the council more ideas on how to restrict landlords).

Then there is President Brendmoen who tells is that equity demands we all pay into the system so that the elites continue to have a peaceful coffee sipping morning, er I mean she says it is so that trash remains affordable to the rest of us. She also thinks city staff and city owned trucks will do it even better.

I mean, trash was affordable back when we had less illegal dumping, back when Merriam Park residents were free to organize their neighbors around one trash hauler while the rest of us either used our skills to get cheaper prices or shared with our neighbors. Tell me again how getting the city even more involved will make it even better? Oh, yeah, they’ll probably screw us even better than the trash consortium mafia is.

Many of us tried to warn the city of St. Paul – or, at least, the parts of the city that weren’t the Merriam Park NIMBYs – “Minneapolis has had municipal trash collection paid for (and paid, and paid and payed) out of property taxes, for decades. And if you drive through Minneapolis, there is all sorts of trash illegally dumped on the street, even though trash collection is “free“”.

Renters Remorse

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A friend of the blog emails:

These amendments wouldn’t have changed my vote, but I wonder if it would have even passed if rent control as defined through the council’s amendments had been on the ballot?

Not likely, which is how it should have been in the first place – not passed.

I ask, as if in a vacuum, will this teach voters a lesson, change how they vote? The answer to that question is also not likely. 

Indeed, I’d wager a shiny new quarter that this will be used by the hard left to push for even more “progressive” city councilbeings.

Other Animals

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A friend of the blog emails:

I had read a while back that some garbage collectors in Saint Paul were not meeting their obligation to customers and were not collecting trash. Mine was consistently being picked up, so I felt fortunate, especially since I was never a supporter of city wide trash collection, at least not the inefficient way Saint Paul was doing it.

With the heat, I had avoided a great deal of yard work during June, but towards the end of the month, I finally had enough yard waste to put out at the curb.

No collection.

I didn’t worry about it much. I just left it out for the next week.

Still no collection.

I finally contacted my hauler who told me they were contracting with another hauler to collect yard waste and to contact them. Ok. I would guess this wouldn’t be my job, but I did it anyway. That hauler told me they had never heard of me and that is why my yard waste wasn’t collected and they’d investigate more.

So, I reached out to my own hauler again. This time, they told me my yard waste wasn’t out by 7am on collection day. (It’s been out for two weeks.) But, they insisted that this other hauler was ultimately responsible.

I called the other hauler back. This time, I was told that actually, in my part of town, my own hauler is responsible for yard waste collection and that they aren’t contracted to collect yard waste for that part of town.

So, my head is spinning. Yard waste is not important to me. It will break down in the container. I’ll have more space and when they get it figured out, it will get collected one way or another. But, this is very poor practice. As we all know, if we let trash collection happen in a free market, as it should, then the original hauler would be cancelled and I would go with someone who could actually provide the service that I pay for. Since Saint Paul took this control from me, I sit here, with very little option.

The only satisfaction that I get—knowing that those whiny Marshall Avenue people who fought for this exact system are also getting the same poor service as me. And it’s only a slight bit of satisfaction because they’ll still support the same city council and mayor that allowed this to happen.

The only results they really care about are getting government to do exactly what they want

Things Are Just Great. Thanks For Asking.

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Saint Paul notched its 19th homicide over the weekend:

The city of St. Paul recorded its 19th homicide Friday night after officers conducting a welfare check in the city’s Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood found a man dead from a gunshot wound.

A statement released by SPPD said officers were dispatched to a senior living apartment building on the 700 block of East Seventh Street just before 7 p.m.

They arrived, made entry into the apartment and found the man, who is believed to be in his late 50s. Initially, it was unclear to the officers if the injury was self-inflicted or caused by someone else, but after members of the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office and our forensic services unit responded and gathered more information and evidence, it became clear that someone had shot the man.

Just for reference, Saint Paul had 38 homicides – the worst butcher’s bill in 25 years, and an alarming death toll in its own terms.

If we continue at our current pace, the city will have 43 in 2022.

Great job, Melvin.

A Piece Of The Action

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So what happens to the “Lime” scooters – The popular electric scooter rentalsthat used to see around Saint Paul?

When you remember that st paul is “Chicago on the Mississippi“, the answer pretty much sorts itself out:

Among the details, Lime will pay the city a trip fee of 10 cents per trip for every trip that begins or ends within the city. Those fees are paid to St. Paul on a monthly basis.

In addition to regular trip fees, Lime will pay a “park impact fee” of 20 cents per scooter for all trips that begin or end on city parkland. The city will also be reimbursed for staff time spent relocating or removing scooters from prohibited locations, at the rate of $35 per scooter, as well as a $20-per-day storage rate at the city’s Dale Street Public Works facility.

Everything in St. Paul must transfer money from the productive parts – the few that are left – to the government.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

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A friend of the blog emails:

This is the 2nd time this year that a driver has driven into a utility pole on St Anthony Ave in Saint Paul and has caused power outages in the city. St Anthony Ave is a street that has been “traffic calmed”- bike lanes added, parking removed in some places, speed limit “reduced”.

It’s funny, because before we started calming traffic, I don’t recall things like this happening with as much frequency.

Yet, I am seeing people on social media asking for more traffic calming, speed bumps, bump outs, etc and I am seeing CM Jalali agreeing.

What are they not asking for? More traffic violation enforcement, more enforcement of impaired driving violations, more enforcement of drug and crime laws- you know, things that would actually help solve problems like these.

“Traffic calming“ is to “calm”, what a straitjacket is to “sane”.

Cleanup

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St. Paul man shoots daughters boyfriend after he allegedly barges into his house with a very bad attitude:

A 56-year-old man told investigators that his daughter’s boyfriend broke kicked in his front door, threatened his daughter, and he shot him.

Paramedics pronounced [“boyfriend” Kaleef] Barnes dead at the scene.

According to police, this killing marked the 13th homicide in St. Paul this year. Last year at this time, the city’s homicide count was at nine. Barnes’ shooting happened just hours after an unrelated shootingThursday evening in the North End neighborhood where one man was killed and another seriously wounded.

The case is still with the Ramsey county attorneys office. Coming weeks after the Hennepin county attorneys office declined to charge a woman for a self-defense shooting in her own home, and apparently declined to press charges against it would be car jacking victim, one might be tempted to feel encouraged that citizens are cleaning the cities up, just a little bit.

But Berg’s 18th law is still in full affect. We don’t know all the details, and if anything, John Choi may be worse at dealing with civilian self-defense shooters than even Mike Freeman.

So your metaphysical appeals in whatever form your worldview recognizes on behalf of the homeowner/citizen are encouraged.

The Last Karen On The Island Has Yet To Walk Out Of The Jungle

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The St. Paul school board voted to keep masks on kids.

Bear in mind, the districts “Director of public health and wellness” recommended dropping the mandate:

“Effective 12:01 a.m. on March 28, that we move forward with the following changes: Masks are not required with low- to medium-community case rates in Ramsey County,” Langworthy said while presenting a slide with numbers.

One of the boards members responded (with emphasis added):

Concerned board members argued taking action, based on numbers that would be delivered with a delay, would be too late.

“If it was from the previous week’s data, we receive it the following Thursday and then we implement masks on Monday, we’d be implementing it from previous weeks’ data though, correct?” board member Chauntyll Allen said. “So, the surge would be happening, basically. It would already be happening — we wouldn’t have masks, we would find out about it on Thursday, and we would implement masks Monday — but from Tuesday or Wednesday the week before until Thursday, students would still be walking around without masks as the surge is existing.”

Ms. Allen has done an admirable, If inadvertent, job of illustrating Kevin Williamson’s thesis that politics is the least efficient possible way of getting anything that matters done.

As far as making public health decisions there anything but reflections of the current state of political logrolling?

You know where I’m going with this, right?

Who Warned You…

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…about this kind of thing, City of Saint Paul?

Building permits in Saint Paul are off 80% since “rent control” passed:

The rent control ordinance passed in St. Paul last November is having exactly the consequences that were predicted before it was passed. If you set a price below a market price, you increase demand relative to supply, worsening the very shortages the price control was meant to fix.

From a MinnPost piece:

With three months of data on the books since the passage of the rent control measure in November, results are rather grim for anyone hoping for new apartment buildings in St. Paul. Compared to the same period during the previous year, multifamily building permits are down over 80 percent. Meanwhile, in Minneapolis overall construction is up as the economy has rebounded.

And it’s worse than that. Landlords are jacking up rents, fast, because they know that with inflation gutting the rest of their budgets, they’re not going to get another chance.

And yet the rent control advocates – highly schooled but uneducated drones that they are – still say this is about making housing affordable.

Destructive Destruction

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The CVS store that has served for the past few decades as one of the anchors of the MIdway’s “main street”, at Snelling and University (but for seven months after the George Floyd riots, of course, where it stood boarded up, a monument to the perfidy of the metro DFL) is closing in a couple of weeks.

A friend of the blog emails:

CVS is keeping the store in a residential neighborhood on Fairview open, but not the one on a busy urban corner next to transit and a “world class” soccer stadium? Why would they ever not want to do business there? We’ve been told over and over again how precious that real estate is, how the train and the stadium were going to be a boon.
http://www.twincities.com/2022/03/09/longstanding-st-paul-cvs-at-snelling-and-university-to-close-at-the-end-of-the-month/

Perhaps boon is in the eye of the beholder- it certainly has been a boon for vagrancy, crime, and vacant lots. I shouldn’t assume that that wasn’t the goal.

Expect apologists for the Carter, Walz and Biden administrations to claim “It’s not our fault! Look at this:”.

In mid-November, the Rhode Island-based pharmacy chain announced a major realignment of its national retail footprint, with a heavy focus on consolidating retail locations operating in close proximity to each other. The closures amount to 300 stores per year for the next three years.

Of course, the fact that that location is in an increasingly crime-ridden area, and has a record of being looted from wall to wall, couldn’t have possibly.affected the decision to close this store, rather than the one in Mac-Groveland, Crocus Hill, the Target on Uni, or the two at the University of Minnesota, nosirreebob.

Leave Bad Enough Alone

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Our cities are a little like Charlie Brown.

Every time Lucy puts the ball on the ground, Charlie remembers all the times she’s pulled the ball away. And yet, he has faith; maybe this will be the first time.

Lucy’s back:

Let’s make sure we’re clear on this – the only “fans” of this idea are the members of the non-profit/industrial complex and the consultant class, who’ll benefit handsomely from it.

As they did from light rail, and the “urban reimagining” of which it is a part.

As they did from the Saint Paul Port Authority’s grandiose, costly, failed urban utopian visionmongering.

As they did from “Urban Renewal”, which did the opposite of renew urban life, replacing old downtowns with sterile, brutalist concrete canyons (see also – Downtown Saint Paul, from Minnesota to Jackson).

A friend of the blog emailed:

I94 was built to “revitalize” middle class Black neighborhood and poor white neighborhood. Historically, it is now said to have destroyed the Rondo neighborhood businesses. 
But, people were not defeated. Black businesses persisted. Businesses by Immigrants from Asian countries also moved in. Perhaps I94 worked. It revitalized!
How dare they. So the Green Line was built to “revitalize” marginalized neighborhoods of working class Americans (of all races, ethnicities).
It kind of worked-businesses closed or left to areas that were no longer on Green Line. Many Black owned, Asian American owned, and immigrant owned businesses left.
Any hope of retail that appealed to work class neighbors was squashed by Allianz Field construction. It was further solidified once the remaining businesses were allowed to be destroyed in the 2020 riots.
Yet, our elites must believe there are still too many of the wrong people lurking around the neighborhood. We need to be further revitalized out of the community. Maybe Bill McGuire and his soccer fans are scared of us. Thus, people like Councilmember Mitra Jalali and urbanist activists propose to once again destroy what communities have built around. 

In a city destroyed, over and over, by urban planning dilettantes, this is yet another fun project for the urban wonk class, which will be paid for literally by taxpayers, and figuratively by generations of the urban miserable yet unborn.

Someone Else’s Backyard

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A friend of the blog emails:

LOL at all the Yes In My Backyard Karens who have suddenly become Not In My Backyard when University of St Thomas is concerned.

I know many of these same people argued against and successfully fought off any kind of retail that could have happened in the former Bus Barn site that is now Allianz Field. In fact, they fought against neighbors of the former bus barn site, fought against any retail that would have added to the tax base (because the proposed retail asked for parking!), and then unironically fought against neighbors of the bus barn site to advocate for a soccer stadium that did not only receive tax exemptions (as all stadiums do) but was also granted a variance to add more parking than allowed in that area of the city. And they still champion their “success” at what they did for a neighborhood that they don’t even relate to. They still pretend to believe that all soccer fans take transit, the the soccer stadium isn’t surrounded by more parking than what was there before.

But now, St Thomas wants to put a sports complex near them? The horrors. It’ll bring cars! (Well, yes, any development would and don’t people already drive to Town and Country? I doubt many who pay to be members take the bus there.) It’s a stinkin’ sports complex rather than something that I’d rather live by. (Well, yes, but you’ve been bragging for years how much your property values have gone up because of your work, so cash in-move to where you want to live, somewhere guaranteed never to change, if you can find such a place.) Did I mention it’ll bring cars and we thought we solved that problem by getting rid of parking minimums? (Once the Karens give up their cars, I will believe that the issue is solved.)

Honestly, I don’t care one way or another, but those neighbors certainly deserve to have a little change happen to them that makes them a little uncomfortable for all they’ve done to others via advocacy for tear downs to build big apartments to Allianz Field. I understand that there is some money involved for some Town and Country members should the deal go through. It will be interesting which group of wealth wins out- Karens like Mary Morse Marti and Sean Ryan or St Thomas, or maybe the only winners will be the Town and Country club members

Mayor Carter/Frey’s Perilous Tightrope

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On the one hand, official hypochondria along with privileged lawlessness is polling very badly for the DFL this fall. So the vaccine mandates (and the whole “public safety is a privilege” thing) have got to go.

On the other hand, if DFLers abandon hypochondria, the Karen vote (social, not ethnic) will rebel.

So the mayors chose the middle path: end the useless mandate, keep the useless masks.

Science-y!

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Dear Saint Paul bars and restaurants,

I get it. You’re between a rock and a hard place. Many of you know how stupid the mayor’s vaccine mandate is – someone who got the Pfizer vaccine a year ago can come into your establishment, hacking their brains out and contagious as can be, while someone with natural immunity a month old is kept out. And your employees have no vaccine mandate, even though they’re the ones who will be standing around the place for hours at a time – which, the science shows, is where the real risk comes from.

And it’s not like I don’t take this pandemic seriously. I’ve got very vulnerable relatives. I’ve had Covid, donated all kinds of convalescent plasma, been vaccinated, and take all the care necessary. I’m not laughing this whole thing off.

But even the CDC and other public health authorities are starting to admit that vaccine mandates and lockdowns are completely counterproductive, that masks are about as useful at public health as aluminum foil pants, that eventually everyone is going to get Omicron, and that the right approach is likely going to be to protect the vulnerable, but go on living our lives.

Which is the exact opposite of the approach the Mayor is taking with this idiot mandate.

So I’ll tell you what.

If you agree with the mandate? Feel free to make your sentiments public. My response should be obvious by this point. You needn’t worry about making room for me.

If you want to go along with the mandate because you have to, that’s fine. I won’t be patronizing your establishment for the duration. I get the bind you’re in, but at some point people have to say enough is enough. Feel free to tell the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and all the other people who support this idiot policy I said so. Do you want me to help you put pressure on them? I’m there. And I hope we can get together when the crazy is over.

If you don’t want to go along with the policy, but you need to be discreet? Pass the word around – under the table, discreetly, obviously. I will do my best to be there, and bring friends. I get it, you don’t want to be made an example of like the places that stayed open last year. “Test cases are for other people”, in public health as in self-defense. I’m not going to ask you to be a hero. But pass the word; I will do my best to make it worthwhile.

Enough is enough.

Dear Hostage-Takers – And Hostages

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To: Mayors Carter and Frey
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Your Hostages

Mayors,

You just announced your new and, if I may be frank, moronic Covid restrictions:

Let’s make sure we’re clear here.

I had the OG Covid, way back in 2020. Back before it got easy to catch and less virulent.

I’ve donated convalescent plasma. As much as I could, in fact.

Got vaccinated – not out of any ideological drive, but because I’ve got some exceptionally vulnerable relatives.

Pretty sure I just got over Omicron.

I’ve been contributing to herd immunity since most of you, my “Karen” neighbors, were hiding in your basement and dunking your food in rubbing alcohol before eating it. I am likely the immunologically safest person you will meet anytime soon.

And I will not be spending one dollar in Minneapolis or Saint Paul until this is over. And if I get completely out of the habit of spending in Saint Paul?

Oh, no.

Bear in mind – I’ve been trying to spend more money in harried Saint Paul establishments over the past 20 months; I’ve tried to help my neighbors out.

No more. You people voted for these hamsters. You all can go down with the ship.

Not another dime.

Good Vibrations

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A friend of the blog emails:

I’m beginning to think that the developers and those councilmembers who get donations from developers supported rent control in order to make the case to eventually exempt developers from rent control, thus allowing them to purchase more property as they pushed out small landlords.

Scratch that- I knew it all along. It was pretty obvious that was the goal. What I don’t understand is all the complaints about the developers pulling out of projects right now, until they get their exemption. People ought to proudly tell us that they voted for this since they were pretty proud of themselves when they were campaigning for rent control, you know, because it helps those poor POC or some such other thing that we don’t quite understand, but gosh darn feels good.

Mid stage single party “progressive“ government is when its stakeholders still haven’t figured out their sense of “charity” is being manipulated.

End stage single party “progressive“ government is when the government doesn’t have to go through the pretense of caring what its stakeholders, to say nothing of voters, think..

Cognitive Dissonance

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It snowed Friday night. Saturday morning I was running errands and was so excited to see a snowplow, I took a picture.

Then I remembered I don’t live in St Paul anymore. 
Joe Doakes

I live on a snow emergency route. I hear them go by in the night.

Almost like I live by a city council rep.