“MNob” at Norwegianity tries to turn my genuine, apolitical tribute the the late Nick Mancini into a political screed.

Oh, she fails, of course, because whenever MNob (or pretty much any other leftyblogger) wants to tangle with me on any subject she always fails, and always will. 

But on this topic MNob is…well, a bit thick, as the sage might say:

what the suddenly ethic-loving right wing fails to grasp is that Mancini’s is in the middle of the bluest neighborhood in the bluest city in the bluest state. 

“Suddenly ethnic-loving”.  Hah.  That’s funny, coming from someone as screechingly myopic as Ms. Nob.  Nobster:  I am demonstrably more ethnically eclectic, in terms of personal anscestry, experience and overall fluency, than you will ever be.  We can take that to the bank.

But it’s the “bluest neighborhood” thing that’s more “interesting”, where “interesting” in this case means “removed from reality in kind of a bizarre way”.  Nob – so what?  It’s my city.   Nick Mancini was a restauranteur – one who (unlike some hypothetical MNob-owned restaurant, presuming MNob is a better cook and entertainer than lawyer) leaves his politics at the door.

Which is what MNob should do with her rhetoric, since…

Dave Thune has his election parties there, and it’s safe to assume that those GOP faithful visiting are doing so as if venturing into some odd ethnic enclave.

…she’s wrong.  Tim Pawlenty, Norm Coleman, Phil Krinkie, Joe Soucheray, Randy Kelly, Jerry Blakey and all manner of non-DFL, non-“blue blue blue” politicians and media figures have turned up at Mancini’s over the years, for all the same reasons that Dave Thune does; because Nick Mancini welcomed everyone, and, unlike MNob, didn’t let politics overcome basic human character and decency.

It’s “safe to assume” that Republicans who go there think they’re on some sort of safari?  Jeez, someone’s been marinading her brain in the cliche bucket.

It’s the West End – the part of the city Mitch Berg has labeled the semi-gritty, somewhat downmarket West End of Saint Paul. It’s the real childhood home of Nick and Chris Coleman, although Mitch seems to want to forget that part. 

“Seems to forget it?”

No, MNob, I know that the Coleman brothers – children of one of Minnesota’s most powerful politicians, stepchildren of one of its most powerful publishers – wrap themselves in the West End’s blue-collar mien at every opportunity.  But since I was paying tribute to Nick Mancini, I figured it really didn’t contribute to the original story.  Her little snif is to be expected of someone who didn’t mention even one word about Coleman’s skill on the bagpipes.   

It’s racially integrated, has small houses, and has a whole host of functioning neighborhood groups and churches – social engineering at its worst!  It’s the home of the people who defeated the state-subsideized [sic] Gopher State Ethanol plant. It’s the neighborhood that figured out how to make sure that 35E will never ever have a speed limit of more than 45 miles per hour.

All of which I’m on the record as supporting the West Enders on, by the way, not that MNob would let anything get past her Impenetrable Wall of Stereotypes.

Like… 

And as much as Mitch and Erik Hare get along, Erik lives in Irvine Park, the snooty appendage to the real West End.

The lawyer is dinging on people for being snooty!

It’s the sort of neighborhood and restaurant the average Anti-Strib and Shot in the Dark reader holds a romanticized image of, but would never actually visit, and would likely get lost in if they tried. 

 So do us all a favor and stay in Minneapolis.  I’m sure there’s some corporate chain steak place you can visit without having your sensibilities offended by the genuineness of Mancini’s.

And I repeat: …not that MNob would let anything get past her Impenetrable Wall of Stereotypes.

I know nothing about MNob’s background – but since she never lets that stop her, I’ll feel free to fill in the blanks.  MNob – while adding zilch to the discussion about Mancini – has shown that like most preening, stereotype-sodden liberal city residents, she’s terribly insecure about what must certainly have been her privileged suburban upbringing (I’m guessing Plymouth), and about the simple fact that she’s less eclectic, less tolerant, and not nearly as good a feminist as I am. 

Dave Thune, by the way, is a fellow North Dakota expat.  Say “hi” from me, wouldja?

Never send a Nob do to a Wege’s job.

A lot has been written about Nick Mancini, who passed away Tuesday at 80 of complications of Alzheimers.

(Photo from the Strib) 

 Mancini had been for sixty years one of old Saint Paul’s foremost restauranteurs; everybody knew him, from politicians to kids in the neighborhood.   Mancini’s was a great place to take a date – especially if she was from some godforsaken suburb and needed to be shown how really really fun a night out in Saint Paul could be.  So everybody has been eulogizing Mancini.

I’ll add my two cents.

I interviewed Mancini, and his son Johnny, back in 1987.  I was doing a story for a local paper about the big new “Vegas” addition to Mancini’s Char House, by then a 40-year institution on the West End (the part of Saint Paul west of downtown below the bluffs).  The grand opening the following week would feature Tony Bennett; a who’s who of the old Levee neigbhorhood – Saint Paul’s traditional Little Italy – was going to be there, too – Mama D, Lou Cotroneo, Vic Tedesco, and a zillion other names ending in “o” and “i” unknown to me but fixtures in the old neighborhood.

And if you hung around the place at all, you figured out a lot about the character of neighborhoods like the West End, which, even for a Saint Paul neighborhood (a city called “fifteen small towns with one mayor”) seems like a throwback; a tattered, rough-looking but comfortable and fairly safe neighborhood that, recent up-market moves closer to downtown aside, feels like it’s hardly changed since the end of World War II. 

Longtime West Ender Erik Hare – who mooched off of Mancini even more than I did – also wrote about Nick:

My first memory of Nick came when I was working on a political campaign across the street. Nick loved to dabble in politics, and while he took care of everyone he was sure to take care of the public servants he knew served Saint Paul well. I was there one evening when he carted over a great big tray of food.

“Eat it! No, it’s no problem. If you don’t eat it, I’ll just throw it out. You might as well enjoy it!”

He always downplayed his charity, making it almost a sin if you didn’t take it. So we all tucked in with the plates and napkins he thoughtfully brought along. It was great after a hard night of calling people and related politicking. But I had to ask a colleague one question:

“These are great stuffed shells, but I didn’t know they were on the menu at Mancini’s.”
“Just eat” was the reply. And we did. Boy, did we eat that night.

Nick often gave away food that way, after church or just when he felt like it. A lot of people came to wonder how he made money that way.

He made enough. Enough is as good as a feast. Everything about Mancini’s is a feast…That was the great gift that Nick gave to us all. He created an institution at the heart of the West End that we know will be a part of us all even after he is gone. A spirit like his is more than the steaks and the good times. Mancini’s belongs to all of us, throughout the community.

Anyway – it’s a legacy one hopes his kids carry on. 

UPDATE:  And Nick Coleman, working on his ostensible home turf, delivers the kind of column he does best:

I tell people that if you want to “get” St. Paul, Mancini’s is a good place to start. Each photo on the walls is part of the intricately woven story of the people and the place, including shrines to the vanished Monroe and Mechanics Arts High Schools and the legends of the St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame…In my favorite photo [of the hundreds lining Mancinis’ walls], taken on Columbus Day 1931, most of the Italians of St. Paul stand on the steps of the cathedral for the dedication of a monument to Christopher Columbus. Proudly standing in front, with his parents and his sister, is 4-year-old Nick Mancini.

It is a time and a place that are gone. But which left a city and a steakhouse still open for business. Nick Mancini started when he could buy only potatoes six at a time. He ended up helping the poor, feeding the hungry and leaving us a place where the powerful come to be seen — and to be seated — among the common people.

And where Nick was king.

Exactly.

That’s how long it’s been since the Highland Park District Council filed its payroll taxes with the IRS or the State of Minnesota.  496 weeks, give or take a few.  Nine and a half years.

Ten years.

That’s how long it’s been since the Highland District Council has been audited.

$33,000 to $37,000. 

That’s how much the Council may owe to the IRS and the state of Minnesota in unpaid payroll tax withholding and penalties.

I attended the Highland Park Community Council meeting last night.  It was an information-only meeting, intended primarily to announce the extent (as far as is known) of the Highland Community Council’s financial problems.

For those of you who don’t live in Saint Paul – the District (or Neighborhood) councils are non-profit organizations that coordinate and administer community improvement plans, among other things.  They act as a de facto level of government; depending on the people and the neighborhoods involved, as a combination of project administrator, ward-heeler support group, chamber of commerce, complaint clearinghouse, influence mart and cash conduit.  They are the outlet for idealists, career non-profiteers, busybodies, and concerned citizens. 

The Highland Park Council has been the subject of much caterwauling among Saint Paul’s political establishment since neighborhood Republicans organized themselves enough to get two local GOP activists, Bill Poulos and Georgia Dietz, elected President and Vice President last month. 

After Poulos called the meeting to order, the first – and really only – order of business was the treasurer’s report.  The bad news took a solid 45 minutes; there really wasn’t any good news.  The council – as in, the treasurer and volunteers from the board – are still trying to sort out the mess left by a full-time paid “organizer” who apparently wasn’t much for “organizing” paperwork.  The treasurer commented that all of the Council’s financial records were piled into boxes and scattered over hell and half an acre.

The board – twenty members (President, veep, secretary and treasurer, two at-large members, twelve “grid” representatives and one each from the city’s Housing Resource Administration and the West End Business Association) – asked a whole lot of questions about the status and process of the “investigation”, the path forward, and – most interestingly…:

• Why the process was being “politicized” (even though no party affiliations had been mentioned)
• Who “leaked” the story to the Pioneer Press?

I thought it was interesting; a semi-public organization comes up way in the hole, and one of the first instincts is to blame the newcomers’ politics, and to wonder why secrecy was breached?  “What happens in the Highland District Council stays in the Highland District Council?” 

I asked.  The rep who asked about the “leak” insisted she was concerned about privacy and fairness.  The other – well, I don’t think he ever really did explain why the political party of the new members was an issue to my satisfaction.

Not only do we need to follow this – but in fact we Saint Paul Republicans need to follow the examples of the Republicans in the Highland Council, and start getting involved in this level of government. 

By the way – the whole story broke (and was so credited at the meeting) on a blog about which I was theretofore unaware (because it’s like a month old), SaintPaulicy, to my knowledge the first non-media Saint Paul political blog.  It’s well-written, has a high signal-to-noise ratio, and could well be the capitol city’s version of “MN Democrats Exposed”. 

Excellent job!

I’m going to the Highland Park Community Council meeting this evening, at the Highland Community Center, to watch as the new, GOP-led board starts digging into…

…well, we don’t know what.  It could be years of mismanagement.  It could be (and there are indications of this) the result of a staffer who just wasn’t much for paperwork (I’m the last one to cast the first stone on that count).

The meeting is at 7PM this evening at the Highland Community Center, which is in the Highland Park Library building.

But most importantly – if Republicans ever going to make a difference in Saint Paul, it’ll be by changing things from the grass roots on up.  The victory in Highland was a good, long-overdue start.  And not just tonight, but at your ‘hood’s community council elections.

Commenter Fresch Fisch noted on Monday:

This is the spark that needs the fuel folks. If you live in St. Paul, no matter which neighborhood, you must be there. If you are a blogger, you must be there to compensate for the “under-reporting” the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Villager, and Avenues newspapers will give this story. If you are just a Republican, we need your help, SHOW UP AND GIVE US A SHOW OF SUPPORT! If you ever want Saint Paul Republicans to be competitive, well, here’s your chance. This is where it starts folks, at the grass roots level.

This is an exciting time in Saint Paul GOP circles.  Oh, we have nowhere to go but up, it’s true – but with new leadership and an upset victory under our belts, it’s high time we started climbing.  

Hope you can join us there.

A couple of Saint Paul legislators, operating under the cover of both darkness and mayoral complicity, tried to ram a stealth tax increase through the Legislature:

 Without any public notice or testimony, a Minnesota House-Senate conference committee voted around 3 a.m. Monday to authorize the St. Paul City Council to levy a 3-percent sales tax on food and alcoholic beverages sold in the city’s bars and restaurants, starting Jan. 1. The full Senate then voted early Monday evening to kill out the food and beverage tax amendment, which had been slipped into the big end-of-session tax bill.When word of the tax increase proposal circulated Monday, response from opponents was swift.“We’re already maxed out on our drink prices compared to the surrounding communities,” said Dan O’Gara, owner of O’Gara’s Bar and Grill. “This tax increase could kill the (hospitality) industry in this city.”

The legislation would have increased the tax on beer, wine and liquor sold by the drink in St. Paul to 12.5 percent from the current 9.5 percent. The sales tax on food sold in city restaurants would jump from 7 percent to 10 per cent…The tax was never proposed in a bill, so St. Paul bar and restaurant owners never got a chance to tell legislators how it would affect them, [Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association executive director Jim] Farrell said. “It’s the sleaziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Mayor Coleman?  Sure, he’s all for it:

While the tax was her idea, Moua said Mayor Chris Coleman and some City Council members vetted it privately. “Nobody likes to impose a tax, but they didn’t object,” she said.

Coleman was tight-lipped about the proposal, but said for the second year in a row the city of St. Paul is looking at a gigantic hole in its budget.

“We’re continuing to work hard for local government aid to deal with our $16 million deficit,” Coleman said, referring further questions about the sales tax measure to Moua.

Coleman sorta summed up the culture shock involved here; he and the Gang of Four extreme liberals who dominate the Council ‘s primary goal is to work for government, as opposed to working for the governed.  The mission, to these people, is to ensure government is sustained by any means necessary.

Even sleazy ones.

 

 The old saw says “90% of all politics is local”.  That’s especially true in Saint Paul, partly due to a city council system that inherited some of Chicago’s old-boy (and old-girl) clacqueishness, and partly due to its’ system of “community councils”.  These councils – one in each of the city’s official neighborhoods – are elected, more or less (everyone in the neighborhood may or may not be able to vote, depending on the rules) – but as a very general rule, they are the province of people who really really love tinkering with the nuts and bolts of low-level community politics. 

They are also one of the key sources of grassroots political power in Saint Paul.  Which is why the recent takeover (some DFLers say “coup d’etat“) of the Highland Park council by a group of Republicans was such good news. 

Bear in mind – these councils tend to be provinces of DFL orthodoxy, run by career non-profiteers who’ve eked out livelihoods scudding about running petty pseudo-governments below the radar.  They aren’t bashful about using that power to their ends; in my own Midway neighborhood in 1993, an electrician from Highland Park took his life’s savings and opened a gun shop on Snelling Avenue.  The Hamline-Midway Community Council pulled out all of the stops to shut Greg Perkins and Saint Paul Firearms down, carrying on a years-long smear campaign against the businessman in the media.  When neighborhood conservatives mounted a challenge to put some pro-Perkins people on the council board, the council hurriedly organized a campaign to repel the intruders (ethical) and changed its bylaws to gag all board members who disagreed with the board’s majority position or face expulsion (dubiously ethical, cowardly).

The DFLers who hold the power love it, and they hoard it jealously:  a witness to the Highland board voting wrote me to say “By the way, did you know that [Gayle Summers, until recently the council’s paid staffer] was greeting people at the election meeting, telling people NOT to vote for Bill [Poulos, the incoming Republican chair] or Georgia [Dietz, a St. Paul GOP stalwart and another new board member], because they’re “too divisive”?  Hmmmmm. Can an employee of the council DO THAT?”

The “bad” news – if you’re a DFLer who’s part of the city’s heretofore single-party power structure, rolling the log over might have exposed a lot of financial cockroaches:

Newly elected officers at the Highland District Council in St. Paul say the neighborhood group owes thousands of dollars in back taxes and penalties and that its finances are in serious disarray.

President Bill Poulos sent a letter to the group’s board members Thursday saying the Minnesota Department of Revenue recently seized $1,568 in unpaid payroll taxes and that a conversation with IRS officials this week revealed the group owes more than $33,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties dating back to 1998.

“We have serious financial difficulties,” Poulos said. “This is what we know we owe. We don’t know what we don’t know. We suspect it’s considerably more than this.”

I will be following this closely.

I love this next bit of probably-unintended bias:

Poulos was elected board president two weeks ago in a Republican takeover of the council that highlighted increasing partisanship in neighborhood groups.

 “Partisanship”.  When it’s DFLers exercising untrammelled power (even at the petty level of the neighborhood council), the word never appears (see also: everything Lori Sturdevant has ever written).  But let Republicans run a well-organized campaign to get a share of the power, and suddenly it’s a mean, nasty, brutish world (ibid).

Gayle Summers, the council’s lone full-time staffer and one of the city’s longest-serving community organizers, resigned last week.

As one of the city’s 19 district councils, the group is funded in part by taxpayer dollars.

In addition to the taxes and penalties, Poulos said IRS officials have no record of tax returns for the nonprofit organization from 2001 to 2005.

Summers could not be reached for comment. Her husband, Thomas Summers, said she was not home and could not be reached Thursday night.

“We are monitoring the situation and we hope that things work out for that organization and that they can continue to serve the community,” said City Council Member Pat Harris, whose 3rd Ward includes Highland Park.

By the way, parts of the power structure in Saint Paul are showing their true colors.  From an email on a Saint Paul discusssion forum:

>I’m sure that [Summers] could see
> that she is going to have a very inexperienced board
> that will be tripping over itself, saying stupid
> things, getting its nose into places it doesn’t
> belong

I had to ask – where don’t citizens in a democracy “belong”?

From the PiPress story: 

Poulos said newly elected officers began examining the group’s finances once they were able to gain access to the office’s computers. They found unopened mail stuffed in drawers and learned of the Department of Revenue seizure after asking the council’s bank for updated statements.

The group has $12,000 on hand, leaving it unable to cover its IRS obligations, Poulos said. He stressed that the group is not bankrupt or insolvent.

“It’s shocking. No one had any inkling of the kind of errors that were being made,” said Armstrong, who is still a member of the board. “We’re all eager to find a solution.”

Former treasurer John Goering, who is no longer with the group, confirmed he had little oversight over the books.

“I’m very willing to help with what I know, which in truth isn’t very much,” Goering said. “I think I saw two checks in the whole time I was there.”

I will be following this story as much as I possibly can.

Here’s where we can all help out: 

The group has scheduled a public meeting at 7 p.m. May 23 at Hillcrest Recreation Center to update community members and discuss how to proceed.

If you’re a Saint Paul Republican, or just someone who wants to see some accountability in Saint Paul politics, you oughtta show up.  I will be there, come hell or high water.  If you’re interested in showing up, let me know – write me at “feedbackinthedark” at yahoo dot com. 

(Fraters are also watching the story)

I’ve long advocated introducing toll roads to Minnesota, especially the metro area, as a substitute for generalized taxes to support road construction.

Mentioning this around DFLers, of course, draws offense; to the DFL’s statist senses, all public goods are a public duty, with “public” meaning “the whole public” (or at least that part not favored by tax breaks from the DFL-strangled legislature).

And as the standardbearer of all DFL folk “wisdom”, the Strib can’t help but vent for it, even when basically agreeing with the concept:

Tolls cannot substitute for government’s broad responsibility to raise the taxes needed to build and care for basic transportation.

Um – why? 

I mean, if it were determined that tolls could somehow replace gas and other taxes, why wouldn’t we reassess this “responsibility?”

The Strib does, in fact, support the experimental addition of a toll lane to 35W in the South Metro…:

But tolls used specifically to relieve congestion and support transit on certain crowded roadways might be worth trying. Thus we applaud Minnesota’s application last week for federal money to refashion Interstate Hwy. 35W between Burnsville and downtown Minneapolis to include a toll lane for single drivers that would, in turn, help finance bus rapid transit service.

…but, naturally, all libertarian sense has been stripped from the proposal: 

The idea is to free up more space in regular lanes, draw more commuters to transit and coax others to alternate routes or times. A similar experiment in Stockholm raised bus ridership and reduced congestion by 20 percent.

Indeed, tolls (like so much of the “Transit” mania gripping the local center-left) are to be tools, used to further the powers-that-be’s frenzy of social engineering:

Toll lanes should not be seen as “solving” the metro region’s severe shortfall in transportation funding. They cannot substitute for the Central or Southwest light-rail lines [Really?  Why? – Ed]. Tolls should always be set high enough to retain transit’s competitive advantage. 

Does anyone proof-read this crap?

What “competitive advantage” does transit have?

  And care should be taken to assure that tolling doesn’t damage central business districts.

One wonders if the Strib editorial board has reviewed the ghastly toll that its’ beloved Central Corridor light rail line is going to take on the non-“central” business district in the Midway and Frogtown – a district that has been saved by small, Asian business that is going to be gutted by nearly a decade of rail construction, for a line that will detract from rather than enhance the neighborhood (it’ll be a light rail rather than trolley line).

One wonders if the Strib editorial board even understands any of this.

Saint Paul is having City Council elections this fall. 

The usual suspects are lining up. 

On the “Saint Paul Information Forum” – a long-running email discussion group on Saint Paul politics – a thread started the other day about the voting for the group’s executive board.  My longtime political sparring partner Erik Hare – West End transit activist, recent NARN guest and proud amateur wonk – responded to me as I responded to a jab at my habit of writing my pets into uncontested races:

 I do.  I write in pets, friends and kids, usually into uncontested races (usually involving candidates I don’t like), so that I can easily ensure that my vote has been counted. 

 > Oh, but what have you done about it?

Erik has sown the wind.  He shall now reap the whirlwind.  A whirlwind of dog hair.

Saint Paul’s city council is up for election this year.  Now, in some of Saint Paul’s seven wards there might actually be some choice – an actual GOP or at least semi-conservative DFLer in the Randy Kelly tradition, one of the “pro-life, pro-assault rifle” wing of the East Side DFL – it’s fairly clear that in my own ward, Ward 4, there will be no meaningful difference.  In the Four, we’ll have our choice between someone just like crypto-Maoist Jay Benanav, the current, outgoing rep, a man so left-of-center he made Paul Wellstone blanche in muted horror, or someone just like him who wears a Patagonia skirt.

Until now.

No, I’m not running for the St. Paul City Council.  In my DFL-throttled ward full of retired union guys, state employees and teachers union members, I’d have as much chance of winning as I would of getting a called third strike on Torii Hunter.  Oh, I could be a protest candidate, all right – but then I’d have to drop the show.  Frankly – and I don’t think this is ego speaking – I think I do a lot more good for regional conservatism on the air than pounding futile pavement in the Saint Paul Four.

But my dog doesn’t have a talk show.

(portrait of the candidate as a puppy)

Clu Berg has everything one really needs to serve on the Saint Paul City Council. 

1. She barks loudly at intruders, which would make her the only genuine law and order candidate on the Council.
2. She has soft, pettable fur, which will do more for peoples’ health than anything the City Council has proposed recently.
3. She pees and poops outdoors, rather than dropping legislative turds like the “city income tax” in the Council chambers
4. She curls up around your feet on cold nights.
5. She has a better sense for avoiding unintended consequences of things like “city income taxes” than any of the currently-sitting Councilpeople.
6. She’ll have me for a chief of staff.

And so I hereby announce the (write-in) (probably) candidacy of Clu Berg for Ward Four of Saint Paul’s city council!  She’s running on the “Dog/Human Consensus” party ticket, so as not to siphon away crucial (also nonexistent) party funding from any GOP candidate who might step up.

Come election day, remember; Every Dog has her Day – and today is Clu’s!

UPDATE:  Yep, I’m stuck in the past.  Benanav is leaving.  I changed the post, above.

Saint Paul School Board member Al Oertwig resigns after his login ID was associated with someone viewing child pr0n on a publicly-owned computer:

 “According to the police report, [Metro State] university security officers called St. Paul police to the library after a patron told a security officer earlier in the day that a man was watching porn on a computer and pointed him out.

The officer approached the man and saw him watching a pornographic video of what appeared to be three adult men and three boys, the report said.

When the officer tapped the man on the shoulder and told him to log off, the man apologized, gathered his belongings and began to leave. The officer told the man to stop, but he ran away, the report said.

(Aside:  A guy resembling the fiftysomething Oertwig got away from a Saint Paul cop?  Huh?)

Security officers pulled the computer’s processor, found the library identification number of the man who had logged in and linked it to Oertwig, the report said. They also obtained images from security cameras of the man entering and leaving the library.

A security officer told police he could identify the man. The police report didn’t indicate whether investigators have asked the officer to confirm whether the man was Oertwig.

Oertwig is, of course, innocent until proven guilty.

Via MDE

The Saint Paul School Board is going to debate, again, a resolution by a left-wing boutique pressure group to try to hamper military recruiters on Saint Paul school property.

A source close to the issue says

The superintendent [says] there may be protesters there from the left. While they got the opt out form expanded, they are angry they did not get the recruiter ban from cafeterias. I suspect there has been pressure on the board to reconsider that issue at tomorrow night’s meeting.

Proof that madness doesn’t necessarily reign supreme at the SPPS…:

I believe the superintendent is frustrated that [the school board is]  spending so much time on this issue and not on the issues of student achievement. I fully agree with her, and I know you do to.

And there’s a call to action, here:

I know this is short notice, but if any of you can come to them meeting by  6p.m. tomorrow to hear debate and be prepared to speak at 6:30 — if the left starts the attack at the podium. If they appear, do not sign up to speak until they have thrown the first punch. Otherwise they will have the last say …Let them speak first, then sign up. Or, ask if the sign up sheet is broken down by pro and con.If for some reason they don’t speak, and the debate seems to be controlled, then don’t inflame them. But…this time we will need to. Plus, we must force our differences with the left on this issue and drag them kicking and screaming back to the center.

I’m mostly healthy and rarin’ to go, this time.  I’ll be there. Think what you want about the military – but when it comes to giving opportunity to the working-class, minority and immigrant students that the district serves so very very badly, the military has the best record around. The “student” group – and the board members who are carrying their water, Tom Goldstein and Ann Carroll – are upper-middle-class, Highland Park/Crocus Hill/Mac-Groveland limo paleoliberals who care about people of color, immigrants and the poor – the people who are most likely to see the military as a path to opportunity – only as far as they provide them a political sinecure.  They need to be put back in their place.

So I’ll see you there.

As I discussed with the St. Paul School Board’s Tom Conlon last weekend on the NARN, elements on the board want to restrict access to St. Paul students on the part of military recruiters.

Swiftee – a longtime gadfly of the board – is leading everyone interested in speaking out against this move at this afternoon’s board meeting. 

It’s at 4:30, at the SPPS headquarters fortress at 360 Colborne in Saint Paul. 

I’m going to try to be there. 

UPDATE:  Couldn’t swing it.  But Swiftee could.

Saint Paul will be getting the 2008 GOP National Convention.

The good news:  They have selected a planner:

A federal Transportation Department official and former Republican Party operative will decide where delegates sit, how to keep the media happy and what events to stage at the 2008 Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities.

Maria Cino, who was named deputy secretary of transportation two years ago by President Bush and was his national political director in 2000, will be the Republican National Committee’s lead planner for the convention, committee spokesperson Chris Taylor said Monday.

Cino will work with the local host committee and city officials to coordinate an event that’s expected to draw more than 45,000 people — including delegates, media and visitors — to the Twin Cities…Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn, said Cino was the perfect choice to bring people together in planning the convention.

“Throughout her exemplary career, Maria Cino has been known for her ability to roll up her sleeves and get things done,” he said.

So far so good.

Of course, for the 75-odd-percent of my adopted hometown that votes DFL – and for the 5-20% of that number who could fairly be called the “lunatic fringe” – it’s all about them:

  At the first of three St. Paul forums on the convention Monday morning, officials heard concerns about limited access to downtown, protesters and taxpayer liabilities…Some, like West Side resident Gerry Berquist, said they want officials to ensure that protesters are treated fairly and that downtown business won’t be adversely affected.

“There needs to be a huge community gathering so that these questions can be asked,” he said.

Bergquist’s remarks are the tip of the iceberg.  The local left – expressing their wishes on a number of local email discussion forums and blogs – want unprecedented access to the XCel Energy Center during the convention.  Some of them want absolutely untrammelled access to not only the facility, and to the President himself, but even to the conventiongoers as they go about their daily business.  Some want to “debate” convention delegates on the street – “debates” that sound in most cases more like harassment – in order to perhaps “educate” them.  When questioned, they seem to studiously avoid references to their more deranged cohorts, as if they’re just no way an anti-Republican demonstrator will cause problems.

I have a couple of ideas in response:

• Democrats – let’s meet out on the street for a real debate.  Send your people up against the legion of right-leaning bloggers that’ll be descending on the event.  See who “educates” whom.
• While we’re so concerned about free speech (and I am in fact a bigger proponent of genuine free speech than any “liberal” I know), how about we think globally before acting locally.  Start by lifting the free speech restrictions at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood clinic.  What?  You say you can’t, because a deranged person might commit violence against some innocent customer?  Hm.  Are we seeing the disconnect yet?

Counting the hours until 9/08.

 The latest lunacy to seize Minneapolis – a city that seizes lunacy like Lindsay Lohan seizes appletinis – is “Instant Runoff Voting”.  An idea husbanded by the Green Party, it basically brings to elections the sober reflection of the Lotto with the insight of a high school popularity contest.

Here’s how IRV works (and I’ll note in advance that my disdain for the idea will make this description seem about as dismissive as I intend it to):

1. For each race, the voter fills in their their choices for candidates, in descending order.  For example, in my most recent Mayoral race, I’d have put a “1” by Randy Kelly, a “2” by the written-in name of my dog, a “3” by Mary Jane Reagan (if she were running – and she’s always running for something), a “4” by the written-in name of “Idi Amin”, a “5” next to DFL-endorsed Chris Coleman, and a “6” next to the endorsed Green candidate (whose name I’m fuzzy on – I think it was Moonbeam Birkenstock, but don’t quote me on that). 
2. The computers would count everyone’s first choices. 
3. If nobody gets a majority, then the computer takes the second choices.
4. And so on.
5. And so forth.
6. And I’m actually very fuzzy on how it works at this point.
7. It’s confusing.  Really.
8. And we come out with a winner.

What I think is most interesting, by the way, is that the same people who kvetch and barber about electronic balloting and how Diebold is run by Republicans are the same people, in many cases, who want to turn our democracy (whatever that means in Minneapolis) over, entirely, to a ranked sorting algorithm.

Seem…opaque to you?

We have a rare moment of bipartisan consensus.  On a St. Paul politics discussion board, a commenter with long-standing ties to the DFL writes:

…remember who is most empowered by the IRV system,  it is those voters who chose candidates who get dropped from the ballot  first.  So, if you would agree that in most municipal elections the  candidates who finish last are not some brilliant issue oriented candidate who  just didn’t have the resources to be heard, but rather a candidate with lots and  lots of tin foil on their head.  And, remember those voters who voted for  that candidate then get their second choice.  You really start to see how  the IRV system is
just about as far away from Jefferson’s goal of having an  educated and informed electorate as possible. 

In fact as someone who has been running campaigns for over thirty years in  Saint Paul, it doesn’t take a lot to figure out the purpose of the IRV system,  it is to achieve by random chance and confusion what one can’t do in an open an  informed election — elect Minor Party candidates.

While I agree with the writer about as often as I french-kiss Marisa Tomei, I think that’s a great point; IRV makes the fringe, nutcase bloc inordinately powerful.  Combine that with a slick, coordinated message that “democracy is broken” and a faith-based plea to make trite protest-voting a way of life, and you will have…

…a city even more strangled by fringe politics than Minneapolis already is. 

  The essence of the new campaigns once IRV happens is vote Green, it doesn’t matter.  Don’t  worry, our candidate won’t get elected, your second choice will win, so it  doesn’t matter that you voted for us first.  Send a protest vote!  So,  if you can be convinced that it really doesn’t matter who you vote for and it  won’t hurt you to throw away a vote, and if they can get enough people  comfortable with that, then they get to win a few seats. 

Democracy and governance is no longer of some value, its just a parlor  game. 

 They want to bring the system to Saint Paul, by the way – and the proposal is getting some traction in high places.  

  [IRV proponents] want to tell you that it will be cheaper to not hold  primaries.  What they don’t mention is that we will need all new computers  for every polling place to read IRV ballots and they don’t mention that the  school board won’t be on an IRV ballot so, you might need two separate ballots  and machines, or at least you will have one contest where you IRV and one where  you don’t
IRV, that will make the average voter happy…

 Another thing about IRV; I measure Usability for a living; it involves answerign the questions “Who is using a product (software, hardware, toy, shopping process, whatever), “What are they trying to accomplish, how important is it to them” and so on.  I (and a class I was teaching at the time) did a usability evaluation on the infamous Butterfly Ballot, for example – and founds scads of things that could make it incrementally more difficult to use more correctly.  Fact is, when things are designed by people whose first interest (or competence) is not designing things to be usable by people whose primary goal in life isn’t using that thing, you’re going to have problems.

And if American election authorities can’t design a punch card ballot – a book with a pinhole – to be clear and usable, what makes anyone think that they can design a rank-based ballot that will be any clearer?  And before you answer that question, remember – there a small but solid number of people out there who earn a very living wage, myself included, precisely because industry realizes exactly how dismally bad most people are at making things usable.

 And, having done campaigns, if you ask voters why they don’t vote in  primaries, the normal answer is because they don’t know who all of the  candidates are and that they don’t pay attention to the election until the field  is narrowed, and of course that will never happen in IRV.  So, you are as  likely to turn off voters as stimulate them. 

But, remember it isn’t the general public that we are concerned about, or  what the average voter will be most comfortable with, the real issue is How In  the Heck Can We Come Up With a Scheme To Elect A Green Candidate????

Exactly.  If you can’t win ’em over with your platform and candidates, baffle ’em.

When Flash deploys the keg, it’s time to hit the beach:

Spring Arrived . . .
. . . at approximately 8:25 PM this evening. That is when I tapped to the first keg.

Let the thaw begin

Save me a glass!

The Strib’s editorial this morning clucks about the way Saint Paul’s University Avenue strip – one of the most successful areas in Minnesota, both in terms of big commerce (Midway Center, with its row of big-box retailers) and smaller enterprise (the two miles of Asian businesses that turned the Avenue, over a couple of decades, from a wretched decayed toilet to a generally decent place) is scaled.

They have a plan, you see:

The plan, prepared by Urban Strategies of Toronto after months of discussions with residents, is extraordinary. It depicts clearly the challenges St. Paul faces in remaking one of Americas ugliest urban strips in a way that doesnt chase away immigrant shops or low-income residents but adds vitality, beauty, safety and convenience. The plan lists 90 initiatives, including the infilling of big-box parking lots with sidewalk-oriented businesses — a gradual transition from suburban to urban form. “The result will be stronger businesses, more vibrant neighborhoods and a more beautiful urban place,” the plan proclaims.

One of the options they don’t list, unfortunately, is “changing the type of transit chosen for the strip”.

The Met Council has committed Saint Paul to “light rail” for the Central Corridor – the same big, fast trains used on the Ventura Trolley. This option will require University – Saint Paul’s backbone (forget about I94) to be torn apart for the better part of a decade.

Leave aside the advisability of rail transit in a relatively low-density city like Saint Paul (I’m not dogmatically anti-transit, but the Met Council’s choices in this area give one plenty of room to be agnostic about the issue and still have plenty to rage against) for a moment; the Met Council had several options that would have done a vastly better job of connecting the downtowns and not gutted the middle of Saint Paul:

• Build a Ventura-Trolley-style light rail line along existing rail rights of way along the tangle of tracks already connecting the two downtowns – between Energy Park/Pierce Butler and Como Avenues – connected to the rest of the area by feeder buses. This would combine the (relative) speed of light rail, the flexibility of buses, and not tear the hell out of the Midway, and save a zillion dollars by using existing rights of way.
• Use a lower-impact form of rail – “Streetcars” instead of “light rail”, something more like a bus on rails, only with vastly higher capacity and its own right of way. It’d disrupt the street vastly less, be a huge improvement over University’s teeming bus lines, and (this is big) encourage the sort of smaller-scale, more organic development that the editors purport to want. Streetcars wouldn’t require big, elaborate, expensive, disruptive stations, as does the Ventura Trolley – the sort of things that disrupt neighborhoods, and also shimmy urban planners into trying to change the fundamental character of the areas around the stations – as has happened around the Ventura Trolley.

Of course, I read things like this…:

On that front, Minneapolis has moved well ahead of St. Paul in anticipating light rail along its portion of the avenue. Discussions with the Prospect Park neighborhood and university officials have produced detailed plans and rezoning for the station area around 29th Street SE., which promises to be the most dynamic stop along the line.

Here, in close proximity, will be the quiet, leafy Prospect Park neighborhood on one side, and on the other a new Gophers football stadium, a new bioscience campus, a commuter rail line, the universitys inter-campus bus transitway and space for private enterprise to build bioscience laboratories and perhaps 1,000 new homes. One idea is to make this an area attractive to alumni, who might like to retire near campus on an LRT line. Already, the plan, offered by consultant Daniel Cornejo, includes an urban-scale grocery store as part of the rail station.

In other words, they want the sort of cataclysmic neighborhood-shaping that accompanies the disruption caused by the sort of construction they support.

Sorry, Strib. I like the city I live in just fine. Most of us who live here voluntarily do. Go and shape your own city in your image.

Because you’ve done such a fine job in Minneapolis.

This article about the battle against speeding in st. Paul and other cities.

Concerned about speeding motorists on St. Paul’s Raymond Avenue, members of a St. Anthony Park neighborhood task force …were putting the final touches on the request [for help with curbing speeding] when they got word that a woman and her two children had been hit by a car while crossing Raymond near an elementary school.

The accident…sent the woman to the hospital.

 Sounds dangerous.  And near a school, no less!

So what’s the official response from the school itself – and the principal, who’s charged with seeing to her students’ safety?

Andrea Dahms, the principal at St. Anthony Park Elementary, so mistrusted drivers on that stretch that two years ago she removed the school’s student crossing guard at Raymond and Gordon Avenues. That’s the same intersection where the woman and her children were recently injured.

That’s right – stop warning people on the dangerous street to watch for kids, because it’s too dangerous?

And these are the people that are educating the kids?

By proposing a ban on toy guns, unless they’re painted pink, white or orange.

Welcome to life in a one-party town.

The city of St. Paul is moving to ban realistic toy guns, which give police officers nightmares and have led to several deaths in the Twin Cities and across the nation.

Under a draft ordinance, the City Council would outlaw the public display of weaponry that substantially duplicates a real firearm — unless the toy is completely white, pink, yellow or some other bright color.

The ordinance, expected to be introduced next week, also would require toys to have a blaze orange extension extending at least six millimeters beyond the muzzle. The extensions are required by federal law, but are frequently removed.

The measure would ban laser pointers on toy guns.

The rationale, of course, is that cops might mistake a toy gun for a real one, or vice versa.

Of course, banning toy guns or restricting their colors isn’t even a stopgap measure for the “problem” (and the scare quotes aren’t entirely appropriate – every so often someone does get shot while holding a toy gun). 

Councilman Lee Helgen skirts perilously close to an answer:

“I think we will really be leading the nation in how we deal with these non-lethal firearms,” said Council Member Lee Helgen, who is sponsoring the measure. “We have to treat them with the exact same care you would any other firearm. … You can’t tell the difference between a real weapon and these toy handguns.”

And the answer to that is education.  Teaching kids how to act around guns – in a society where kids know the John Woo grip before they know their ABCs, thanks to a liberal Hollywood that glorifies violence even as it pours megabucks into gun control advocacy groups – would help a lot.  But thanks to post-Columbine hysteria, whispering “gun” in a school is likely to get the place locked down and a SWAT team going medieval on your tush – and the political hysteria over the gun issue has meant that the one non-military group in America with a long, successful history of teaching kids about gun safety, the NRA, is frozen out of the picture.

And so we make sure kids carry pink guns.

I feel safer already.

The good news:  There’s apparently no serial rapist in Saint Paul.

 The bad news:  It’s two different guys.

Margaret Martin’s Minneapolis St.Paul Crimewatch blog has the story:

Forensic DNA evidence from the two rapes that occurred early this month on Payne Avenue in St. Paul reveals that the rapes were committed by two different suspects…It sounds as though even the police are surprised to learn this. The method and manner of the attacks were very similar, as well as the suspect descriptions. Unfortunately, this means that there are not one, but two violent rapists on the loose on the East Side of St. Paul. You can read the St. Paul PD’s press release here.

It’d be such a shame if either of the perps were to run into a “victim” who was armed, wouldn’t it?

…and while the City of Saint Paul can’t get around to repairing all sorts of things for years and years…

…they can have a turborooter truck – it looks like a truck with a couple tanks of rocket fuel on the back, and sounds like a company of tanks advancing over gravel and broken glass – outside, cranking merrily away.

Thanks, City!

The Strib editorial board, learning a lesson or two from the street thugs they’ve been avoiding writing about for the past year, are circling their next victim – you.

Watch your wallet:

In June 2004 the Hiawatha light-rail line debuted to rave reviews from riders, applause from community leaders and a volume of passengers that far exceeded official projections.

And yet, even with the ridership numbers, 2/3 of the line’s revenue is from state appropiations. A little over 1/3 is from ridership and advertising – the stuff the Strib editorial board clucks over. “Rave reviews” and inflated ridership haven’t made the Ventura Trolley anything but a state-sponsored money pit.

The result? Minnesota won’t open its next light-rail line until … 2014.

Speaking as someone who lives six blocks off the next light rail line, there’s a term for that; reprieve.

That’s appalling. It’s not just a sign of ossified planning and a lingering love affair with the automobile, it’s a warning that state leaders haven’t grasped the truth about growing, prosperous cities — that an adequate transit network relieves road congestion, improves quality of life, conserves energy and triggers lively new forms of metropolitan economic development.

Of course, 1, 2 and 4 are backed by no emprical evidence, and 3 is doubtlful. But don’t stop ’em – they’re on a roll.

Accelerating the region’s transportation timetable — including light rail, commuter rail, road projects and dedicated bus lanes — is one of the most urgent tasks facing the 2007 Legislature. It would help restore Minnesota’s reputation for enlightened urban planning while burnishing the high quality of life that has long been a Twin Cities selling point in the national competition for economic talent.

I’m no transit hawk – I ignore most of the city-bashing endemic in most critiques of transit, because there is a place for transit, determined by the market. There is no market need for a train from downtown to the airport. There is market need for something – train, bus, whatever – to haul people from the cities, where they live, to the ‘burbs, where more and more of them work. And there are cases under which Northstar and Red Rocks (the commuter lines from Big Lake and Hastings, respectively) could be self-supporting – not right now, of course, but at some point when population in the far east and far west metro exceeds our capacity for building roads (which, despite the one-size-fits-all panaceamongering of the road-hawks is also going to happen; the very thing that makes rails so expensive, buying right-of-way, is going to smack roads upside the head, too), and assuming the Met Council doesn’t turn the lines into monuments to themselves (going easy on building stations, buying used rolling stock for starters), both lines could be self-supporting in the reasonable future.

But that’s not what the Strib is talking about.

Early next year a coalition of planners and business leaders, with wide support from mayors, will ask the Legislature to create some form of dedicated metro revenue stream, perhaps a half-cent regional sales tax, to get these projects on track. Such a tax would raise more than $200 million annually, cost the average local household less than $75 a year, and let the Twin Cities make a commitment now — rather than waiting a costly decade.

Here’s what they envision: The commuter from Eden Prairie could get to her Minneapolis office without wasting time on clogged freeways. The Vikings fan from Elk River could get to the Dome without downtown traffic jams [only to fly into a rage when they realize the same government that taxed them to build the transit system also put the Vikings up in Blaine or Anoka or Farmington…]. The Bach enthusiast from Edina could get to the Ordway without fretting about parking ramps. Suddenly, people would have new choices about where to live and how to get where they’re going.

I have a vision, too. She’s a gorgeous, 35 year old redhead. She has no psychological problems, is a cheap date, smart and articulate enough to replace half of the NARN on the air, has a thing for [censored for the early morning audience], and best of all she’s going to knock on my door in about ten minutes, without my having to so much as take out an ad on Match.com!
Really! That’s my vision!

I went to a presentation a few years back by former Saint Paul mayor Jim Scheibel – one of the most disastrous mayors this city has had. It was at a forum on affordable housing. He got up and spoke on the vision for affordable housing; liveable places, with enough of the amenities of modern life to make the resident feel like they’re not removed from society; enough room to put one’s family in; of course, in easy walking distance from good transit. Completely absent from the discussion; what those of us who have to find our own affordable housing have to pay for this. Try as I did, he never got around to that.

A vision of…well, the paper calls it “convenience” without a vision of the work that Minnesotans are going to put into the taxes to pay for it – and believe me, on top of everything else I pay for in this state, $75 to pay for this “vision” is too much – isn’t a vision so much as it is the petty tyranny of the petty bureaucrat.

This isn’t some planner’s fantasy. In Denver, transit has spurred a $1 billion cleanup of an old industrial brownfield;

Nice, but – at whose expense?

in Portland, it has created a leafy, walkable urban core;

Again, nice – but does the core necessarily follow the transit? Minneapolis has a “walkable urban core”.

in Washington, lively neighborhoods of cinemas, bookstores and condominiums have sprung up around Metro stations.

Benefitting DC’s yuppies immensely. No, I’ve been there, and the DC transit system is a wonder. And a money pit, too!

In fact, it’s the very concept embodied in the Metropolitan Council’s main planning documents. The problem is that Minnesota doesn’t have the money to carry out its own plan.

And where I come from, that’s called “a reason to get a new plan”.

There are plenty of details to negotiate in a regional transportation tax, some involving principle and some involving mechanics. But if lawmakers want to maintain the momentum of this vibrant metro area, they need to say, “All aboard.”

No. They need to say “let’s suspend our transit dogma and quit building visions, and start doing what Minnesotans really need.

Saint Paul stops asking job applicants about criminal records:

Mayor Chris Coleman made the change this week, and ordered the city’s Department of Human Resources to investigate whether ex-convicts have been discriminated against in city hiring practices in the past.

Well, duh.

In a letter ordering the change, Coleman also said he would work with the private sector to “encourage adoption of a similar policy.”

While I think policy change is generally a good idea (I say “generally”), good luck with that “working with the private sector” thing. Most of us don’t have an army of underemployed lawyers to get us out of messes our employees cause.

“As the ability of employers to do background checks increases, one measure of a negligent hiring claim is you didn’t do as much as you could have,” [labor attorney Joe] Schmitt said. “As the bar raises in terms of what you can do, then the bar raises in terms of what you should do.”The Council on Crime and Justice has been lobbying cities to implement changes. Gambill said St. Paul’s decision makes it a national leader in the effort — so far, only Boston has completely removed the question from city job applications.

While I support this change in principle, I have to wonder what’ll happen a few lawsuits down the road.

The city started down this road a year ago, when it moved the criminal question to a part of the application seen only by the human resources department, but not hiring managers in other departments, said HR director Angie Nalezny.

Nalezny also said the city conducts background checks when the applicant would work with children or have access to money or sensitive information, and would know whether those applicants have a criminal record.

Therefore, there’s no risk of a sex offender being assigned to work with children, Nalezny said.

“Anybody that works in a rec center, absolutely we’re going to do a background check on them,” Nalezny said.

All well and good. But it’s the convicted burglars working for the Code Enforcement department that I’m most worried about.