Chino Latino is an hYpStR restaurant in Minneapolis.
I’ve never been there, but pretty much everyone I’ve ever known who clamed to be a regular seemed like the kind of person that’d be on Molly Priesmeyer’s speed dialer, if you know what I mean.
But I saw this, and almost wished I could be regular…:
…just so I could stop going in a loud huff.
So I did the show at the fair last night. Had a great time talking with Ed Matthews, who’s running for Congress in the Fourth District, as well as Andrew Campanella from the Alliance for School Choice, and Big John Howell from WIND’s John and Cisco show live from the convention.
Of course, while I always had a blast broadcasting from our old digs on Judson near the southeast corner of the fairgrounds, our new location – just inside the front gate, on Dan Patch Avenue, is a complete hoot. Largely because we’ve installed tables and chairs and sun-umbrellas, so it’s genuinely a nice place to stop and decompress (when you’re not outraged at the mess the Tics want to make of this country) from the hustle and bustle of the fair, of course…
…but also because the DFL booth is right across the street.
As always, I make a point of interviewing them whenever I can; on the NARN II show, we always take liberal callers first, and that includes the ones that come into our lair on foot. Most of them aren’t up to talking on the air – most of them seem to be acting more from inchoate rage than considered thought.
Especially one woman last night.
As I was interviewing Matthews, a woman – short, leathery, fiftyish, with a mop of cairefully-coiffed short brown hair, wearing an Obama shirt and a face that bespoke a middle-aged life that had never brooked any disagreement – stood in the far corner of the Patriot’s area, and just grimaced; the look was partly “that wasn’t a Baby Ruth I just ate”, and partly pure, undiluted hatred.
I waved to try to defuse things, and maybe induce her to hang around for a quick chat. Her faced tightened up, as if someone had brought her a plate of steamed refugee. She scampered away, holding her head, as if the cognitive dissonance was making her immune system reject her brain.
We have to share a country with these people.
Oy.
In a post last Friday about the “Fairness” Doctrine, a commenter quipped:
Imagine the outcry when the wacko Phelps family of Kansas gets to have anti-gay programs on all of the stations that have pro-gay rights material.
Heh. Funny – but as luck would have it, that’s not how the “Fairness” doctrine works.
Here’s how I remember it working in the first eight years of my radio “career”, from 1979 to 1987, when both the Doctrine and my job at KSTP were repealed.
The “Fairness” Doctrine didn’t assign ideological quotas to station’s programming; there was no bureaucrat in the Minneapolis office poring over stations’ schedules, coloring in liberal shows in crimson and conservative shows in blue, comparing swatches, and issuing orders to reprogram dayparts.
What the “Fairness” doctrine did was give the public – or parts of the public that were up in arms about a station’s presentation of one or several issues – legal and procedural grounds to challenge a station’s license renewal.
When stations renew their licenses (and I forget what the time period is for that; it happens every several years; I want to say “seven”, but don’t bet your mortgage on that), the FCC takes complaints from the public about the station’s “public service”. During the period of the “Fairness” Doctrine, that meant that people could write the FCC and complain that the station’s politics didn’t grant equal time to one view or another. Investigating these complaints and adjudicating them was part of the license renewal process was part of getting the license renewed; the FCC could assign corrective actions or (in theory; don’t know if it ever happend) deny renewal.
For most radio stations, the “programming” was mostly music – a matter of taste, certainly, but not a matter of public policy interest; writing to the FCC to demand a country station switch to alt-rock (record stores in Minnepolis in the mid ’80s frequently had “petitions” sitting around from groups that wanted the FCC to “serve the public” by forcing, say, K102 or KOOL108 or some other FM frequency to play alternative rock) would pretty much fall on deaf ears. But stations did (and to an extent, still do) have to show some effort to serve the public interest; these efforts had/have to be documented to the FCC at license renewal time. For a music station – like the first four I worked at – it was a matter of filing logs showing that the station had played
For talk stations, though, the potential was there to discuss controversial topics – news, current events, social issues and so on. These issues go way beyond having political overtones; most are inextricably political.
Under the “Fairness” Doctrine, the public could complain about the “balance” of the station’s presentation; at renewal time, if people complained the station was “too liberal”, the management had two options: have some sort of counterbalancing conservative on the air so they could tell the FCC they were taking measures to balance things out (which was how I got my first show, in 1986; KSTP had plenty of liberals on the air, and Scott Meier put me on weekend graveyards to cover the station’s butt for very, very cheap), or avoid controversy in the first place.
It all came down to showing to the FCC’s satisfaction that the broadcaster was adequately “serving the public interest”, so they’d renew the station’s license to use their frequency.
Since the license was mandatory for keeping the station on the air, most stations’ managers opted not to rock the boat – opted to play toward the middle and avoid complaints that could lead to costy, license-risking challenges.
So if the “Fairness” doctrine is reinstated, what’ll happen?
There won’t be any more time given to Fred Phelps; there won’t be a huge phalanx of complaints demanding equal time for his views. I have THAT much faith in my fellow citizens.
There also won’t be any equal time for conservatives on network newscasts, because it’s news and journalism, and everyone knows news and journalism are balanced and objective. Also they subscribe to “journalistic codes of ethics”, and while you and I both know that a “journalistic code of ethics” is nothing but a framework to rationalize dodgy behavior on the part of journalists, to the FCC it’s a get-out-of-“fairness”-free card. It’s not bias – it’s journalism!
But talk radio? The leaders of the medium – Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham, Hewitt, the Northern Alliance – proudly identify themselves as conservatives. It’s part of their marketing; it’s how they reach their audience.
So when stations come up for renewal, their schedules will show a number of hours of talk that, for marketing purposes, labelse itself “conservative” talk. And in a world where Atrios and Kos draw half a million visits a day, the left powers that be COULD, in a “Fairness Doctrine” run broadcast world, send hordes of droogs after that station up for renewal, demanding more liberal programming “in the public interest”; an Obama-appointed FCC would likely give the complaints plenty of credence. In order to retain their license, the station would have to add some liberal programming, like the Stephanie Miller or Ed Schultz – if they’re lucky (they’re the two liberals who show any life in the ratings at all) – or some stiff like “Lionel” or Michael Jackson (who do not). While there is nearly no audience for this programming, the FCC will be acting on the complaints, not ad receipts or ratings. The station would do as well to leave the transmitter off.
Of course, conservatives could in theory challenge the licenses of the few liberal talk stations – Minneapolis’ KTNF, the local FrankenNet “Air America” affiliate is a good example – but that’d really be a side issue and a diversion. The entire liberal commercial talk radio audience could fit into Rush Limbaugh’s garage with room enough left over for his cars. Limbaugh, Hannity, Bennett, Ingraham, Boortz, Miller, North, Liddy, Medved, Prager, Hewitt and even Jason Lewis are an army of 900 pound gorillas driving armored bulldozers, in ratings and financial terms. Comparing the ratings firepower of conservative and liberal talk radio is like scrimmage between the US Seventh Fleet and the Saint Paul Sailing Club.
So given the pain that the Doctrine will cause stations that run conservative talk, saying “conservatives can get equal time on liberal stations” would be like getting stripped of a Super Bowl ring, but knowing someone else gets a free toaster as a consolation prize, On a station running five 900 pound gorillas in armored bulldozers, it’d be like being forced to trade three of them for schnauzers on trikes.
It’s a win-win for liberals – – they get to water down the conservative movement’s best vehicle for free speech – and a lose-lose for conservatives. And anyone who tries to convince you there’s any other rationale to it is either uninformed, disinformed, or trying to make you one or the other.
The Minnesoros “Independent” not only glorifies vandalism, but giggles at the creation of an atmosphere of hate!
Somebody painted “Get Out Phascists” on the Grain Belt sign by the Hennepin Avenue bridge – one of Northeast Minneapolis’ major landmarks, other than Kramaczuks, anyway. (G.O.P.! Get it? Hahahaha!)
Was the Mindy’s response:
Oh, what do you think? Read it for yourself, and ask yourself “if someone had spraypainted DEPORT FAGS on the sign, or ABORTION IS MURDER on a Planned Parenthood clinic, would they, or any Twin Cities’ lefty, be all giggly-“neutral” about this kind of thuggish vandalism?”
It’d almost be fun to find out, except for – I dunno – the fact that I condemn crime, even crime I (in the case of abortion, not killing gays, for the benefit of those of you who sproing convenient and loud doubts about other peoples’ ethics when you get the opportunity) agree with.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at Saint Paul ordinance07-1194 4 (”Green Sheet” number 3046791), which the City Council adopted unanimously at its June 25 meeting. The law would require owners of vacant homes listed in Category II (needs a bunch of work) and Category III (almost tear-down material) to get a city-determined laundry-list of improvements, to get buildings of whatever age up to current building codes before they could get a Certificate of Occupancy. These repairs would add between $20,000 and $100,000 and more to the cost of houses before they could be occupied. These buildings are largely owned by mortgage holders – banks, investment firms, debt traders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
They are largely “upside down” – they were largely foreclosed with loan balances much higher than the houses’ current values. In some cases, the discrepancy is immense.
Dan Bostrom represents the Sixth Ward – the upper-half of Saint Paul’s East Side. We spoke on the phone last week.
“It’s not unusual to see houses with $200,000 balances that aren’t worth $30,000”, said Bostrom.
And the problem – at least in Saint Paul’s worst-affected neighborhoods, Frogtown and the North End and the lower East Side – is serious. “There’s one block”, Bostrom notes, citing a block just off Payne Avenue, on the lower East Side, “with 23 houses on it. 12 are vacant”.
The ordinance is intended to compel banks and other lenders owning foreclosed property in Saint Paul to bring foreclosed property up to current building codes before they can be re-sold. “The outcome we’re looking for”, said Kathy Lantry, who represents Ward Seven, which includes the hard-hit Payne-Phalen and Dayton’s Bluff neighborhoods as well as the placid proto-suburban expanse of Battle Creek, “is a city with liveable houses, that people can afford to live in”.
Which is, of course, what everyone wants; it’s the means to the end that are the question. I wondered if this strategy – putting intensely difficult conditions on selling foreclosed and vacant properties – had been thought through; how likely were institutional mortgage-holders to comply with this ordinance? Had there been any “market research” done on the percentage of compliance expected?
“No”, said Lantry. “We did this just for the fun of it”, she quipped sarcastically. She quickly added that the ordinance was not a hasty decision; “We went over this ordinance with any number of bankers, the St. Paul Association of Realtors”, and other local financing bodies to sanity-check the proposal.
“…there was a fair amount of give and take with local community banks in helping to improve upon earlier drafts of the ordinance, and a local representative of an association of community banks in the area has said that they are relatively comfortable with the final ordinance”, added Ward 4’s Russ Stark in an emailed response.
OK – so there was some buy-in (and I plan on following up with some of the industry sources named in the interviews) from the local financial-services community. We’ll come back to that (I plan on interviewing some of the industry sources named in my interviews, later this or early next weeks).
But what if, at the end of the day, the lender doesn’t comply? If the price to get the house – especially a detriorating, vacant one – saleable in the near future is just too high? Will they have to sell at a huge loss?
“The goal”, added Lantry, “is to get these companies to negotiate workouts with homeowners, rather than foreclosing”.
“We have provided a cattle prod to try to get them to negotiate”.
OK, good – but what if they don’t? What if the prospect of a huge loss is just not acceptable, for whatever reason? More to the point – what about the houses in which there’s nobody to negotiate, the city’s huge stockpile of vacant homes (which topped a total of 2003 buildings earlier this week – 80% of which would be affected by the terms of this ordinance)?
“Unfortunately, many of the properties in question, prior to the ordinance, were already ‘falling through the cracks” and deteriorating to the point of needing to demolished”, said Ward 4’s Stark, referring (I presume) to the 300-odd Category III properties on the vacancy list.
“If the mortgage holders walk away, the house is probably beyond saving”, said Lantry. “Look – you need to remember that these lenders are not unsophisticated, mom-and-pop lenders. These are big companies…they have a fiduciary responsibility to their trustees…their responsibility is to maintain [these assets] for their trustees”.
But what if the lenders did abandon these properties? And remember, there’s a time limit for properties on the vacancy list. Hypothetically, let’s assume the worst: that most of the banks involved decline to comply with the ordinance. They also stop paying property taxes, allowing the properties to go tax-forfeit. The land forfeits to the State, obviously – but the State then assigns it to the city/county to dispose of. Assuming the hypothetical “worst case” scenario, what does the city intend to do with all of this new property?
Bostrom denied any interest in this; “We don’t want to own a bunch of houses”. But how about the land the houses are on? Bostrom vigorously denied any city plant to gobble up property.
Russ Stark: “We’re trying to use this and several other tools at our disposal to avoid the problems that all of us are concerned about — and yes, there is some risk that these tools will not be effective.”
“Remember”, added Lantry, “you have two years to sell a house that’s Category II…if they can build a bridge across the Mississippi in 24 months, they can sell a house in two years.”
Of course, bridges that carry 140,000 cars a day are a bull market. Houses, these days? Not so much.
More Friday.
UPDATE: Of course, it’s Russ Stark. Matt was an ACLU lawyer. In 1986. Blah.
(Read the whole series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V)
Los Angeles puts a moratorium on new fast-food outlets in poor neighborhoods:
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity.
I’m not sure why they didn’t just ban obesity.
The yearlong moratorium is intended to give the city time to attract restaurants that serve healthier food. The action, which the mayor must still sign into law, is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health.
“Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods,” City Councilman Bernard Parks said.
They reflect also an extreme shortage of money for paying for “quality foods”. The poor person’s diet in this country is a paradox; we’re the first society in history (barring maybe the Dutch before the Tulip Crash) where the wages of poverty include obesity. The staples of the poor person’s diet in this country are starch (ramen, mac and cheese, potato chips, fries, lots of bread in all its forms), carbs (pizza, spaghetti, tons and tons of sugar in a zillion forms, much of it in the form of corn syrup), and fat, fat, fat.
On welfare? What gives you the most mileage for your Food Stamp dollar?
Starch, carbs and fat.
Shopping at the cheap-o grocery – what fills the bag fastest and cheapest?
Starch, carbs and fat.
On top of all that, what’s a Two Cheeseburger Value Meal with a large Coke?
Representatives of fast-food chains said they support the goal of better diets but believe they are being unfairly targeted. They say they already offer healthier food items on their menus.
The only real question: How long before Minneapolis adopts and extends the idea?
Last month, we (via the Mindy) noted that the Minneapolis Park and Rec board had jacked its “large tent event” fee from $60.00 to $10,000 dollars for the Republican Convention.
Specifically for the convention. Specifically to soak Republicans.
Minneapolis Shadow at the Urban Renaissance Coalition blog finds another:
Take a look at the agenda for the Public Safety and Regulatory Committee Agenda item number one on taxicabs. The time period for the fare increases are during the Republican National Convention.
Instead of being happy to allow the increase in revenue from the activity that the convention brings, such as income from cab rides, they need to raise fares. I find this practice appalling. It is another example of how the city officials purposely go out of their way to discourage business growth, or are just plain stupid when it comes to long term thinking on economic development.
Y’know what? I’m not going to stop buying things in Minneaopolis. Nosirreebob.
I’ll come to the Mill City, all right. And buy clothes. And unprepared food.
Lots of it.
Stuff that isn’t taxed.
Not a damn thing more.
Last week, I sent this email (with a few subtle variations, depending on the recipient) to every Saint Paul City Councilperson (and each of their Legislative Assistants, just for good measure).
I’m Mitch Berg. I’m a twenty-year Saint Paul resident. I live in the Fourth Ward.
I also write a blog (Shot In The Dark) and host a radio talk show (“The Northern Alliance Radio Network”).
I have a few questions about a recent City Council decision.
At the June 25 meeting, the City Council passed Ordinance 07-1194 4 (”Green Sheet” number 3046791). This ordinance amends Legislative Code 33.03, and states that vacant homes (in Category I and II – the most saleable homes) can only be sold if all vacant building fees are paid, and if the owner posts a performance bond or escrow equal to the estimated amount needed to bring the structure up to code.
I have several questions about this ordinance, and I’d appreciate your answers.
1) It seems, on its face, that this ordinance is intended to compel banks and other lenders owning foreclosed property in Saint Paul to bring foreclosed property up to current building codes before they can be re-sold. Is this accurate?
2) Has the City Council gotten an estimate as to the likelihood of institutional mortgage-holders (banks) complying with this ordinance? Has there been any “market research” done on the percentage of compliance expected?
3) If a mortgage holder does *not* comply – fails to post the performance bond or escrow, or bring the building up to code – then as I read it, this ordinance means the property remains in limbo, a deteriorating vacant structure. Is this accurate?
4) Given that the reason most of these homes were foreclosed in the first place was that the amounts owing were greater than their market values, and that it can *easily* cost between $30,000 and $50,000 (or more) to bring an older home up to current code standards, on properties that are already “upside down” (worth less than the bank has lent for them), what percentage of institutional owners (banks) do you expect to comply with the terms of this ordinance?
5) Did the City Council seriously discuss this scenario? If so, why did they decide to take the action they did in approving the ordinance?
6) In the event that a large percentage of institutional mortgage holders that own foreclosed, vacant properties in Saint Paul *do not* comply with the ordinance, what is the city’s “fallback plan” for dealing with the large number of vacant, deteriorating properties that would result? And for the additional drag on the values of *neighboring* properties that will result from having huge numbers of vacant, distressed buildings as neighbors?
Finally, a few questions that deal with the consequences of the ordinance:
7) Hypothetically, let’s assume the worst: that most of the banks involved decline to comply with the ordinance. They also stop paying property taxes, allowing the properties to go tax-forfeit. The land forfeits to the State, obviously – but the State then assigns it to the city/county to dispose of. Assuming the hypothetical “worst case” scenario, what does the city intend to do with all of this new property?
8) Again assuming the “worst case” above – is it the city’s intention to use the epidemic of tax-forfeit property to…:
a) drag down property values in these distressed neighborhoods
to make eminent domain settlements against the remaining
homeowners cheaper, to enable the city to…
b) redevelop the land according to its own plans, on the relative
cheap?9) Finally – what do you, and the Council, *believe* the consequences of making properties much more expensive than they are worth to their owners will be?
Again, when you get a moment, I’d be very interested in your answers to the above. If email is less convenient for you, feel free to call my cell phone: [redacted].
Respectfully,
Mitch Berg
The Midway
Wednesday, the responses.
(Read the whole series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V)
So let’s recap what we have so far:
On June 25th, 2008, the Saint Paul City Council passed ordinance 07-1194 4 (“Green Sheet” number 3046791). You can read it for yourself – but in essence, it amends the city’s legislative code to say the following (I’m summarizing below):
To sell a vacant (or “dangerous” or “nuisance”) house, you need a Certificate of Occupancy.
To get a Certificate of Occupancy, you need to…:
- Pay all vacant building fees (Category I properties – the ones in the best shape. There are about 300 Cat I properties among the 2,000 vacant houses in Saint Paul).
- Get A Truth In Housing Report (again, for Cat I houses)
- Post a Performance Bond or Escrow amount to cover the estimated amount of repairs to bring the structure up to code (all categories).
Now, let’s posit a hypothetical; say you’re a bank. You’ve had to foreclose on a ton of properties, because your CEO’s dimbulb nutslap of a nephew went to a bunch of sleazy brokers and bought a ton of Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) that were going to adjust to eleventy-billion percent, and went and spent it all on jet-skis and tipping waitresses at Hooters. Naturally, when the ARMs adjusted the owners defaulted; as housing values sagged, the owners came up “upside down”; they owed you more than the house could sell for.
So you foreclosed on ’em. Business is business, right?
Ordinarily, you’d wait out the market and sell the place when you could get a good enough price to make it worth selling. In the meantime, you are the owner; you and your bank are responsible for the property taxes and – to keep it saleable and keep the city’s code enforcement people off your back – enough maintenance to keep it ready for some approach to the market.
You grab a file at random from the pile of “foreclosure” files on your desk. You open it up. It’s a house on the North End of Saint Paul.
Eventually – I don’t think this is irrationally exuberant – the market’ll rebound. Right?
You have to hope so – because until then, the house that your bank is into for, say, $200,000 (plus fees and whatever maintenance it takes), would fetch $175,000, as is, if you tried to sell it today (and could find a buyer). Maybe less, since there are more and more foreclosures popping up in the neighborhood.
But the City has just passed a law saying:
To sell the property to anyone, you need a Certificate of Occupancy.
To get a Certificate of Occupancy, you need to…:
- Pay all outstanding fees.
- Get A Truth In Housing Report
- Pony up whatever it takes to bring the structure up to code. And by “to code”, we mean “the current code, not the code when the building was built. For the sake of this hypothetical, let’s say the house was built when a lot of the houses in the St. Paul neighborhoods worst-affected by the foreclosure epidemic were built – say, 1920.
“Hm”, sez you, the banker and accidental owner of the property. “We have to pony up a bond, and get all the work done, to current codes, before we can even try to sell this house”.
“What would that mean?”
So you get an inspection. And you get the following letter back from the City (with marginal notes in blue:
(The letter below is an actual letter, to the owner of an actual vacant property, forwarded to me by a contact in Ramsey County’s government who wishes to remain anonymous. It is by no means atypical of a punch list for repairs to an older house – in this case, a 90-something-year-old home on the North End, not far off Rice Street, an area heavily beset by the foreclosure epidemic. I’ve redacted personal information and the address. I can scan and post the original, if needed)
[NAME REDACTED]
STATE OF MN TRUST [Department Redacted]
50 KELLOGG BOULEVARD WEST SUITE [redacted]
SAINT PAUL, MN 55102-1657Re: [Your property’s address]
File#: 04 215708 VB2
Dear Property Owner
Pursuant to your request the above-reference property was inspected and the following report is submitted:
BUILDING
- Replace or sister all damaged floorjoist on first and second floor per Code with proper supports and hangers.
- Remove all exterior wall covering and insulate and frame to Code.
- Replace first floor and basement stairs to Code. (Catch this? You need to remove all the siding and not only insulate, but make sure the framing complies with current standards – which means massive, expensive structural rework).
- Install rear, exterior stairs and landing to second floor to Code with frost footings or close up and stucco.
- Remove covering from first floor ceiling and add floor joist to support second floor. (Cha-chingggg!)
- Install ventilation for bathroom per Code.
- Insure sill plates are in good condition.
- Exterior to be weather proof. (Not cheap!)
- Insure basement cellar floor is even, is cleanable, and hall holes are filled. (Which, with an older place, can mean a ton of money!)
- Install Provide hand and guardrails on all stairways and steps as per attachment.
- Strap or support top of stair stringers.
- Install floor covering in the bathroom and kitchen that is impervious to water.
- Provide thumb type dead bolts for all entry doors. Remove any surface bolts.
- Repair or replace any deteriorated window sash, broken glass, sash holders, re-putty etc as necessary.
- Provide storms and screens complete and in good repair for all door and window openings.
- Provide fire block construction as necessary.
- Re-level structure as much as is practical.
- Where wall and ceiling covering is removed, attic, replace doors and windows, (insulation, glass, weather stripping, etc.) shall meet new energy code standards.
- Prepare and paint interior and exterior as necessary (take the necessary precautions if lead base paint is present).
- Any framing members that do not meet code (where wall and ceiling covering is removed, members that are over-spanned, over-spaced, not being carried properly, door and window openings that are not headered, etc.) are to be reconstructed as per code. (Jeezus H. Christ On A Harley! That means the framing – which could be spaced pretty haphazardly in structures more than 30-odd years old – has to be re-done to current standards. After you remove the siding!)
- Habitable rooms with new usage, replaced windows shall have glass area equal to 8% of floor area, or a minimum of 8 sq. fet., one-half of which shall operate and all bedroom windows shall meet emergency egress requirements (20″ wide minimum, 24″ high minimum but not less tan 5.7 sq. ft. overall). (In other words – egress rooms even on upper floors!)
- Provide general clean-up of premise.
- Provide smoke detectors as per the Minnesota State Bullding Code.
- Repair soffit, fascia trim, etc. as necessary.
- Provide proper draininge around house to direct water away from foundation. (Cha-chingggg!)
- Install downspouts and a complete gutter system.
ELECTRICAL
- Rewire all exposed areas to Code.
- Install front entry light.
- Wire basement to Code.
- Rewire service grounding to Code.
- Insure proper fuses or breakers for all conductors.
- Repair or replace all broken, missing or loose ficxtures, devides, covers and plates.
- Check all 3-wire outlets for proper polarity and ground.
- Throughout building, install outlets and fixtures as per Bulletin 80-1. (In other words, you need to re-wire the place…)
- Install smoke detectors as per Bulletin 80-1 and I.R.C.
- Electrical work requires a Permit and inspections. (…and get a licensed electrician to do it!)
PLUMBING
- All plumbing work requires permit(s) and must be done by a plumbing contractor licensed in Saint Paul. (Cha-chingggg!)
- Expose all plumbing that has been covered with concrete on [sic] sheetrock so it can be test [sic] and inspected. (Not cheap!)
- Finish all waste and vent, water and gas piping for a complete plumbing system to Code. (Major work!)
HEATING
- Install heating system to Code. (You know what furnaces, and their support infrastructure done to code, cost these days?)
- Install gas piping to Code.
- Recommend installing approved lever handle manual gas shutoff valve on gas appliances.
- Install chimney liner.
- Replace furnace/boiler flue venting and provide proper switch for gas appliance venting.
- Tie furnace/boiler and water heater venting into chimney liner.
- Recommend adequate combustion air.
- Provide support for gas lines to Code. Plug, cap and/or remove all disconnected gas lines.
- Provide heat in every habitable room and bathrooms.
ZONING
- This property was inspected as being a single-family dwelling.
NOTES
- See attachment for permit requirements.
- VACANT BUILDING REGISTRATION FEES MUST BE PAID AT NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING AND PROPERTY IMPROVEMENT (NHPI) FOR PERMITS TO BE ISSUED ON THIS PROPERTY. For further information call, NHPI at 651-266-1900, located at 1600 White Bear Avenue.
- Provide plans and specifications for any portion of the building that is to be rebuilt.
- Most of the roof covering could not be properly inspected from grade. Recommend this be done before rehabilitation is attempted.
- There was considerable storage/clutter within property at the time of the inspection. All to meet appropriate Codes when complete.
- All items noted as recommended do not have to be completed for code compliance but should be completed at a later date. Possible purchasers of property should be made aware of these items.
Sincerely,
[Name redacted]
[Title redacted]
Remember – all of these have to be done (save for the two “recommended” items) before anyone can live in the place.
Any builders out there wanna take a whack at estimating this? I am going to take a very ill-informed whack at this, and say $20,000. I think I’m being conservative. Remember – you have a bank to run; no sweat equity here; you need to hire the work done.
And until your bank ponies up for all of this work, nobody can occupy it – hence, almost nobody will buy it (because they’ll just inherit the same problem!)
So, Mr. Banker – what do you do with the property? Remember – it’s already upside down. Its value is falling, since the rest of the block is slowly going vacant. You’re paying property taxes on it. So to sell this house, by the time you are ready you’ll have (counting the original loan liability, my conservative estimate of repairs, and property taxes, and vacancy fees) well over $225,000 on a house that, maybe, will be worth $165,000 for the foreseeable future.
That’s a $60,000 bath.
For one house.
And the one in the next file? And the next one? And the next one?
Repeat this process for most of the 2,000 currently vacant properties in Saint Paul. And for the dozens coming up vacant every month (my estimate; the five Twin Cities law firms that specialize in foreclosures say there are 500 foreclosures a month in the Twin Cities, today, and they are disproportionally focused in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
So what does this mean for Saint Paul?
Good question.
We’ll look at it from a couple of sides – from the mortgage lender side, and the City of Saint Paul’s as well – on Monday.
UPDATE: I floated this scenario past Dan Bostrom, City Councilman for Ward Six, the north-east part of Saint Paul.
He got a chuckle out of it. It doesn’t go far enough. I am, indeed, too conservative in many cases. “There are houses out there with $200,000 mortgages that aren’t worth $30,000”, he said, “And it’ll take $100,000 to bring them up to code”. More from Bostrom – and a couple of other City Council reps – next week.
At any rate – put yourself back in the banker’s shoes, and plug those numbers in; you’ve foreclosed on $200,000 in loan, you’ll have over $300,000 in by the time it can be occupied, and by then you might – might – get back half of that when the market starts to tilt toward some kind of equilibrium.
More next week.
(Read the whole series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V)
The DC Gun Ban is officially euthanized as of today.
I said “officially”.
Because I think Dick Heller’s gonna be back in court sooner than later:
District residents can start registering their guns today. But at least one very high profile application was already rejected.
Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District’s 32-year-old ban on handguns. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit.
But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. He says his gun has seven bullet clip. Heller says the City Council legislation allows weapons with fewer than eleven bullets in the clip. A spokesman for the DC Police says the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns.
Look for DC to try to run out the clock – at taxpayer’s expense, and without an actual end to the game – trying to give the Second Amendment the death of a thousand paperwork cuts.
Though residents will be allowed to begin applying for handgun permits, city officials have said the entire process could take weeks or months.
“I’m shocked, shocked to see that the District of Columbia believes it’s above the Supreme Court”.
Back to court, with copy of Scalia’s opinion in hand, baby:
We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”… It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.
Perhaps Heller should try to register one of these, as a big FU to DC.
Hey, it’s not bottom-loading…
As we noted yesterday, there’s a bit of a foreclosure and vacant home crisis in Saint Paul. And while having 1993 registered vacant homes in a stock of about 115,000 residential buildings is a crisis by any measure, the fact that they are (so far) so heavily concentrated in some of the city’s lower-income neighborhoods – Frogtown and the North End, as well as the East Side’s Dayton’s Bluff, Swede Hollow and Payne-Phalen neighborhoods – is its most visible consequence so far. And that’s just the registered ones. It’s likely there are hundreds more that aren’t in the system yet.
A bus ride down Thomas Avenue in Frogtown, or a bike ride down Front Street between Western and Rice, takes you past rows of blue “Vacant Building” placards taped to front doors. It’s depressing.
So how does the city plan to respond?
It went past pretty much without notice. The Saint Paul City Council adopted ordinance 07-1194 4 (“Green Sheet” number 3046791) at its June 25 meeting. It passed unanimously. It went pretty nearly un-covered in the media, and escaped notice elsewhere.
Including by me. While I live in Saint Paul, and am among the thin film of Republicans who tries to keep the hard-left City Council honest, it’s one never-ending job among many.
But I got an email last week about this. I cited the writer yesterday – he’ll remain anonymous for now, as the information comes from his wife, and she’d like to remain under the radar.
Ordinance 07-1194 4 is the city’s response to the vacant building crisis. My emailer writes:
There are three categories of buildings: cat 1 is pretty good shape (350 of them); cat 2 needs work (1400 of them); cat 3 is pretty tough (200 of them).
None of these houses can be occupied without City permission. Cat 1 is simple – pay a fee and you’re in business. Cat 2 and 3 is tougher – pay a fee, develop a rehab plan, make a deposit to cover inspections, develop a timetable to get the work done. Oh, and you can’t live there while you work on it, the place has no Certificate of Occupancy.
What does this mean?
So it’s not clear that you, as owner, can do the work since you’re not the owner-occupant. You certainly have to pay to live somewhere else while you work on the place, you may have to hire contractors who have the special City-issued licenses to work in St. Paul and yes, that means they charge more.
You might be thinking “no biggie”. You’d be thinking wrong. We’re not talking a coat of paint and and some Murphy Soap here:
Here’s where the new ordinance comes in. When the City says it wants you to bring your vacant building up to code, they mean ALL codes. Building code for wall stud spacing (rip off the siding to add studs, then replace siding). Energy code (rip open the walls to insulate, replace windows and appliances). Wiring code (replace old wires with new plastic-coated wires pulled through the walls to the outlets). Plumbing code: replace lead or galvanized plumbing with copper or PVC. Building code: tear off shingles and lay new plywood to cover gaps in roof boards before reshingling. Jackup the floors to level them. Re-landscape for drainage.
Expensive?
I’ve seen the work order – it’s more expensive than building a new house because you have all the demo work first.
You might be thinking “So what? We make sure we have decent housing stock”.
Well, perhaps not so much.
If the city seriously makes all the Cat 2 and 3 houses go through this, who’s going to pay for it? The foreclosing lenders? They’re not stupid. They already know they’re upside down on those houses, that’s why they took them back in foreclosure. Throw in another $50,000 of repairs before the lenders can sell the foreclosed houses, and the lenders would be complete fools to bother.
So what is the motivation behind the new ordinance? I mean, everyone can agree on sticking it to the lenders that got us into this mess in the first place – right?
More on Monday.
(Read the whole series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V)
I’ve lived in Saint Paul for most of the past twenty years. I have no intention of changing that.
I love this city; its neighborhoods, its attitude, its architecture, its down-to-earth feel.
I love its contradictions. Mark Twain once said, “Saint Paul is the last city of the east, and Minneapolis is the first city of the West”), and as you go through the neighborhoods, you can see why. The great playwright August Wilson lived on Cathedral Hill because more than anyplace he’d seen, it reminded him of the Brooklyn he’d grown up in. Highland Park feels like parts of Chicago; the West End reminds me of Cleveland, Toledo, even parts of Boston; the East Side, parts of Chicago or Baltimore or Camden, New Jersey, depending on the area. My Midway? Well, it could be anywhere. And yet the old saying “Saint Paul is fifteen small towns with one mayor” still resonates; each neighborhood is, in many ways, its own stand-alone city. And with all that, it’s still a ten minute drive from the hustle and bustle and thrum of Minneapolis (and yet you can duck back across the river and escape the crime rate pretty much at will).
But things feel different lately.
Back during the Latimer and Scheibel administrations, Saint Paul felt tired and spent. While the neighborhoods throve, downtown was deteriorating as you watched; the Saint Paul Port Authority committed the city to a series of ruinous boondoggles, Town Square and Galtier Plaza and the World Trade Center, all of which stand mostly unoccupied, or occupied by government and non-profit offices; renting to government is the closest thing developers have to a “get out of jail free card” in Saint Paul, but even the state’s appetite can’t consume all the spare office space in downtown. Saint Paul, especially the downtown, turned into a ghetto of official space and a few stalwart local companies.
During the Coleman and Kelly administrations, things felt like they picked up. I’ll allow in advance that part of it is my projection of good thoughts onto more-conservative administrations. But the fact that Coleman and Kelly held the line on property taxes and spending was huge; people started buying houses in the city again; the plague of absentee landlords abated as people started choosing to invest in living in Saint Paul. The crime rate, always much lower than Minneapolis, subsided as Selby-Dale, Frogtown and the Lower East Side’s crime waves abated. It wasn’t all roses; profligate Tax Increment Financing lured a few companies – most notably USBank – out of downtown and into the huge, and for the next several years TIF-subsidized – West Side Flats complex, leaving several downtown office buildings vacant and strewn with tumbleweeds. But for the most part, Saint Paul during those 12 years had a “let’s do it” attitude.
But since Chris Coleman was elected mayor, and the ultra-left wing of the DFL took prohibitive control of the City Council with five far-left council members, the city just feels different.
Again, I’ll allow that part of it is projection. And the foreclosure crisis, especially on the East Side, North End and Frogtown, doesn’t help.
But a huge part of this intangible, subjective change is the attitude behind the flip in course in the Mayor’s office. The bulk of Chris Coleman’s campaign, and the reason a fair chunk of his supporters voted for him, was retribution for Randy Kelly’s endorsement of George W. Bush in 2004. They rode into office with a promise to raise taxes, not endorse Republicans…
…and not a whole lot else. It was pure negativity. And negativity is a response, not a direction.
The city feels devoid of real leadership these days. It feels rudderless, drifting in a dyspeptic sea of bile. And I don’t mean from Dave Thune’s mythical puking Republicans.
Oh, the city is putting its best face forward for the Convention (when clowns like Thune aren’t slandering the GOP from their bully pulpit); downtown will be in its Sunday best, and I have no doubt that Grand Avenue, Saint Anthony Park, Ford Parkway, Concord Cesar Chavez, West Seventh northeast of Saint Clair, and that strip of downtown from Eagle Street to Wabasha between Kellogg and Ninth will be great places to see, be seen, and take the whole event in.
But elsewhere?
The twelve years of vitality the city experienced under Norm and Randy seem to have dissipated. Rice and Payne and Arcade, after years of slow recovery, seem to have stopped – partly due to the foreclosure epidemic that has hammered the North End and lower East Sides, leaving some streets on some blocks with more blue “Vacant” tags than without. The Midway is riding out the economy better, but University Avenue is on death watch, waiting for the light rail to come through and smother twenty years of largely organic, grass-roots-driven progress. And downtown? The rebirth of the west end of Downtown, from Five Corners up through Wabasha, while gratifying to those of us who remember the Scheibel years, has stalled cold, but for convention preparations.
Comme ci, comme ca. Business has cycles. Cities ebb and flow over time.
Except that it’s about to get a lot worse in Saint Paul. Government negligence is one thing – a good conservative expects it, especially from a bunch of bobbleheads like the Saint Paul City Council.
But there’s a difference between negligence and active connivance in a plan that’s going to gut the city – and the Saint Paul City Council is about to drive across that line with a bulldozer.
And they’re going to do it for the children.
More on Monday.
Via Paul Demko at the Mindy: Michael Kinsley wants all of you mindless proles to quit getting uppity, to shut up and do what your superiors tell you.
The funny part? Kinsley basically cribs Alec Baldwin’s “argument”; “Coleman’s a Republican! Franken is cool! Trust us!”
Demko:
Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley scrutinizes Minnesota’s Senate race today. He chastises voters for getting hung up on Al Franken’s past jokes…
Oh, really, Michael F*****g Kinsley?
Sorry, sirrah, but by your leave I’ll make up my own mind.
And, for what little it’s worth (coming from a mere non-patrician and all), it really has little to do with his jokes – but rather…:
…rather than focusing on legitimate campaign issues:
…yes. Those. Franken has, improbably, fewer positions on these than even Barack Obama.
This year a professional jokester, Al Franken (D), is challenging a professional politician, incumbent Norm Coleman (R), for a Senate seat in Minnesota.
But – again, by your leave, Mr. Kinsley, since I’m one of the mere citizens you deign in your infinite wisdom to scold – we Minnesotans have a bit of a track record with politicians whose only claim to fame is…well, fame. “We” – or at least our moron cousins from Hinkley – elected a governor whose track record was close enough to Franken’s for county work; he was famous mainly for being famous. A celebrity. Actually, Ventura had more political experience than Franken; he’d been the mayor of Brooklyn Center (or Brooklyn Park? I mix ’em up – although to be fair, so did Ventura).
And he spent four years in office as a loud, abrasive mouthpiece for Dean Barkley and Tim Penny, and a de facto DFLer.
And Franken will be no different; “polemicist” pretty much sums up his political resume. He will be no less a sock puppet than Jesse Ventura was.
Not every joke Franken wrote or told over a third of a century in the joke business was hilarious, okay? Minnesota voters will have to decide whether their dislike of professional politicians trumps their enjoyment in taking umbrage, or vice versa.
Kinsley? Bubbie? Thanks for assuming us mere Schlitz-drinking, NASCAR-watching, bible-clinging rubes are obsessed over, ahem, the most understandable part of Franken’s personality.
Doy.
I’ll grant you every word of that – and Franken still has not one single recommendation.
Coleman is a man of no interest, a run-of-the-mill professional politician who started out as a standard issue long-haired student rebel leader on Long Island in the 1960s and surfed the zeitgeist until now.
So like Alec Baldwin, we have the ad-hominem…
Today he is a standard-issue pro-war tax-cut Republican.
…the slur on Republican policy (have you, Lord Kinsley, ever called a Democrat “standard-issue”?), and…
…what?
Franken, by contrast, needs no introduction and from Day One would be one of the most interesting people in the Senate.
Ah.
“Interesting”.
If you say so, Lord Kinsley.
An “interesting” person who raises taxes, jacks up fuel prices (by omission), stifles nuclear energy, appeases terrorists and foments destructive isolationism, coddles the UN, supports speech rationing, gun control, activist judges and the “Fairness” Doctrine, to this survivor of the Carter era, not very interesting at all.
Demko:
Kinsley further points out that any comedian who hadn’t ginned up some risible material over the years wouldn’t last very long in the profession. There’s a fine line, after all, between making people laugh and causing them to squeam.
“If the voters of Minnesota would rather be represented by a hack like Norm Coleman than laugh off a few jokes that didn’t work, then they should stop complaining about being stuck with professional politicians,” Kinsley concludes. “And the real joke will be on them.”
So to you, my liege – if you would deign to entertain a question from a rude fyrd – I ask “what would be an affirmative policy reason to vote for Franken, rather than against Coleman?
“He’s a funny guy” is not a policy reason.
Pardon the impertinence, Lord F*****g Kinsley.
Gary Miller has the best introduction to Bogus Doug’s evisceration of Brian Lambert’s call for media censorship of the global warming debate:
Doug Williams demonstrates why he is duty-bound to never again take 6 months off from blogging by offering this extraordinary post on Brian Lambert’s global warming pronouncements.
In the span of just a few paragraphs, Doug demonstrates Lambert’s unfamiliarity with the scientific method.
But don’t take Gary’s word for it. Read Doug’s post.
A highlight:
Brian Lambert has written a screed a bit wordier, but no sillier about conservatives. But we shouldn’t mock. He’s in his terribly serious mode, you see. He’s trying to explain that he – failed media critic Brian Lambert – has figured out the high holy scientific truths journalists ought to respect.
The ethical challenge for journalists and journalism (as opposed to infotainment personalities in “the media”) is stark. It means accepting what the best available science has now concluded is fact about global warming — that it’s happening and human activity is an aggravating if not principal cause — and pulling the plug on spurious “debate” engendered by conservative ideologues, much like what credible news organizations have done with Holocaust-deniers and creationists.
Of course to anyone with a degree studying science as opposed to journalism it’s a grand load of hooey on it’s face. What exactly is a phrase like “accepting what the best available science has now concluded is fact about global warming” supposed to mean? Real science hasn’t “concluded” that any future predictions – about global warming or anything else – are “fact,” because that’s not how science works. And “pulling the plug on spurious ‘debate'” is about as blatant a rejection of the scientific method as one could propose.
Doug shows in tall block letters the scientific illiteracy which is so comical when coming from a cartoon like Lambert – but so dangerous from actual reporters:
It’s child’s play to find leading experts in climate science dissenting from the IPCC report. Yet that’s not something Lambert even finds relevant. Because “for journalists the debate phase has ended.” Science goes in story phases, don’t you know. It’s not really about the search for truth, it’s about framing the narrative. I don’t think he intended to be nearly so honest, but wow is that ever telling.
The other telling thing here is how Lambert has drifted into the position that journalists should trust the scientific pronouncements of political scientific bodies. I know he thinks this is a special and singular scientific issue unlike any other before or likely to come after. But that just illustrates his naivety. Especially in the modern age, scientific funding is driven to a large extent by crisis-mongering. If Lambert is suggesting – and it seems he is – that in the case of a crisis journalists must abandon their skepticism, he’s calling for journalists to become little more than government propagandists. And what could possibly go wrong there?
And Gary was right, Doug; I hope you’re good and rested. We’re gonna need you.
Taylor Marsh addresses the Center for American Progress report in the same way that Hugh Hewitt addresses a new football season; with preconceptions firmly in place, and no perspective to lend any credence whatsoever – a shortcoming that is neither of their fault, per se, but still renders their commentary meaningless:
Boy did American Progress stir up a storm. Never has one report gotten so many wingnuts in a tizzy. It’s positively delicious.
Yeah, some of us get that way when half of our political system wants to sodomize the First Amendment. Some of us even get upset when they come for Taylor Marsh’s freedom of speech. Not that I’d expect reciprocation.
If your party is in free fall and your base is demoralized what do you do? That is, what do you do if you’re a Republican? You create an issue. Sew panic.
Sew panic.
With the needle of alarm, perhaps?
Perhaps Ms. Marsh means “sow” panic.
I digress:
Rev up that fear mongering machine! Never fear, Fox “News” is here. The trouble is that wingnut talk-radio has as much to fear from their own.
She mentions some Fox droid who lamented the likes of Trent Lott – as I, myself, did.
Next on our incoherent swing through the stream of Ms. Marsh’s consciousness, we get to a big of history. She actually comes close:
When Reagan deregulated the airwaves and nixed The Fairness Doctrine, up came the rise of Rush.
Unfortunately, throughout the 1990s, Democrats remained clueless. I was talking to people about wingnut radio in the 1990s only to see their eyes glaze over.
Why do I suspect it had nothing to do with the subject?
No, I’m not snarking. Well, not just snarking. Because in her next line, Ms. Marsh shows that she’s been toking from the same bong of cluelessness that’s seemed to have driven all liberal talk radio in recent memory, save perhaps Fast Eddie Schultz and Stephanie “Like Laura Ingraham, but Liberal” Miller.
Most just wanted radio shows that drew listeners and raised ad revenue. Fine. All I wanted to do was provide a counterpoint. See eyes glaze over again.
“Oh, Christ. Marsh is babbling about counterpoint again. Doesn’t that woman understand that radio’s a business, not a hobby?”
Profit is critical, absolute reality, but outright ownership of the airwaves is the public’s job and there are a lot of liberals in America, as well as independents who deserve to hear more than one point of view without having to pay satellite prices.
I’m a Veronica Mars fan. Don’t I “deserve” to have my show un-cancelled? Even though I was part of a cult following that didn’t make the show close to profitable for its network?
Marsh’s paragraph is so full of raw talking points, it’s hard to know where to start. So let’s start at the top:
Back to Ms. Marsh:
When Republicans found out what radio could do their greed reached a peak. They used it on Clinton throughout the 1990s and it worked, with that success fueling more campaigns. They cemented Hillary Clinton’s persona as well. They’re doing it again with immigration, which is what has brought Trent Lott and others out.
The Fairness Doctrine is one issue, but the bottom line truly is regulation of the airwaves so one company and one political party doesn’t own them.
I can almost imagine Ms. Marsh saying the word; “companyandpoliticalparty”. Like Clear Channel – which owns Rush Limbaugh – is an arm of the GOP. Of course, Clear Channel si also the company that broadcasts the most “progressive” talk among the majors (behind CBS as a percentage of airtime devoted to liberals – but Clear Channel is much bigger, and accounts for more hours of lefty broadcasting nationwide).
As if Clear Channel were a Republican operation, and they wouldn’t drop Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh in less than a news cycle if liberal talk got better numbers, and hence more profit.
Ms Marsh repeats – without apparently understanding them – the CAP’s statistics on the comparitive number of hours of conservative vs. liberal talk, and accepts without question their conclusion that “it’s not the market – it’s the ownership”.
And with that presumption of ownership collusion comes…
Karl Rove has used right-wing radio for years to pump up the EMOTION of right-wingers, because that’s what gets voters to the polls and right-wing radio listeners vote. The same tactics are continued on “Christian” broadcasting networks throughout the country. It is quite simply the most formidably dangerous weapon the Republicans have to wield against Democrats come election time. Local conservative hosts gain trust with listeners to great affect. It hurts Democrats at the polls.
But behind all that is the simple fact that conservative talk radio is powerful because people listen to it.
Something has to give; something has to be done. The de-regulation of the airwaves was the single most destructive act aimed at the public interest to hit media since talk radio began.
Well, no – in her own words, Ms. Marsh showed that it was the single most destructive act aimed at liberal hegemony over the media.
A media she is woefully ill-equipped to understand:
As a progressive radio host without a home, except on the web, I don’t expect to stay on the air if I can’t pay the bills.
What a crock of crap.
Ms. Marsh; you’re on Blog TalkRadio. Blog Talkradio is free. Any moron can put a show on BTR (and so can some excellent, talented hosts, like my real-radio colleague Ed Morrissey).
So don’t be yapping about paying the bills, since you clearly have no understanding of how real radio people do exactly that – and like your liberal-radio friends, the only answer you have is to run crying to government.
Advertisers and ratings are crucial. But most progressives can’t even find a spot on terrestrial radio from which to launch a show and test it for enough cycles to get ratings. That’s just a fact.
No, it’s just buncombe.
Air America has been “tested” for four years now. By the time Rush, Sean, Hugh, Michael, Dennis and the rest of talkradio’s household names had been on for four years, they were all unqualified successes. Air America peaked within a year of its debut, never made money (and arguably was never intended to), and is circling the drain faster every day.
Sort of like Ms. Marsh’s command of the facts on this issue:
So enter fear mongering. Shaking the radio base. Making them feel they’re going to lose Rush, Sean, et al. Are you kidding? They’re huge money makers and no station manager is going to get rid of them no matter what.
No, but that’s not what the Fairness Doctrine would do. If a station broadcast Limbaugh and Hannity for six hours a day, they’d have to “balance” their schedule with six hours of “progressives” that nobody would listen to, replacing shows that have an audience with six hours of shows that never will.
On the corporate-owned stations of the Salem Network (for one of whom I do the Northern Alliance show on the weekends) which are all-conservative, 24/7, that’d mean a mandatory quota of 12 hours a day of “progressive”, ratings-killing, money-sapping, just-plain-lousy talk.
Raising the fear factor is just a tool to help them get the job done.
The word Ms. Marsh is looking for is “awareness”.
And looking.
And looking.
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