To: MNGOP Legislative Leadership

From: Mitch Berg, UppityConservative

Re: Vikings Stadiium.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

In case the November 2010 mandate you got wasn’t clear enough, repeat after me.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

Everyone – all together now:

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

No public financing for a Vikings Stadium.

Keep repeating it until it sinks in.

We sent you there.  We can send someone else that gets the message.

That is all.

Elizabeth Taylor has reportedly passed away.

I don’t have much to write about her; tune in to Sheila O’Malley over the next few days, she’ll no doubt have a barn-burner of a post.  Or ten.

For my money, my favorite was her turn in Zeffirelli’s 1967 adaptation of Taming of the Shrew.

With no majority in either chamber, the DFL has resorted to chanting points.

The first one was “where is the GOP’s budget?  Huh?  Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

Then the GOP released a budget – and demonstrated that the DFL really didn’t have one, since none of them supported Dayton’s budget proposal.

Then, it was “But you said it was going to be call cuts?  Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

That must not have tested well.  The meme died off in a week or so.

The latest?  “The GOP is attacking the cities”.

What they mean, of course, is “cutting Local Government Aid”, the program that started out as a state subsidizing small towns’ infrastructures, and has turned into a state subsidy of urban DFL profligacy.

The governments of Duluth, Saint Paul and Minneapolis have done a great job of inextricably tangling their budgets with the state, to the point where any discussion of reforming LGA is met, I think without any actual considered thought, with “we’re going to lay off firefighters and cops and teachers!”.

Not “we’ll have to cut back on lawn-mowing”.

Or “We’ll have police doing less non-essential stuff”, or “we’ll have to replace unionized staffers with lower-priced help for lower-profile jobs” or “maybe we don’t need to mow the grass in the parks quite as often” or “we can consolidate some summer rec programs” or “maybe spending $25,000 on dadaistic, incomprehensible “traffic calming art”…

…which may or may not “calm” traffic, but certainly had a lot of drivers meandering about holding their heads in mute incomprehension, which probably caused accidents, until all the “art” was stolen”, or “maybe our schools need to spend their resources on teachers, rather than administrators”, or “maybe if we stopped putting half the boys in special ed for being boys, we’d have a lower Special Ed budget” or “maybe we don’t need to bus kids who live half a mile from school; the obese little monsters could stand a good walk”, or “Maybe we don’t need $300,000 worth of politically-correct electric cars”, or “maybe fourth-coldest state capitol in the US doesn’t need three refrigerated ice rinks” or “maybe taking huge swathes of housing off the taxable rolls for “affordable” public housing that just isn’t “affordable”, and serves no purpose but to turn the cities into warehouses for the poor, primarily to create islands of utterly DFL-dependent voters”…

…or much of anything.

None of the above.  Because it’s traditionally been easier to scare people into submission by threatening to lay off cops, firemen and teachers (rather than meter maids, community organizers and administrators).

Attack on the cities?

Pfft.  The rest of the state has been getting attacked by the cities for a generation now.

What you’re seeing isn’t an “attack on the cities”.  It’s the rest of the state standing up to three big bullies.

And like big bullies, they’ll bluster and phumpher and fume and threaten.

And just like anyone who is responding to a bully, the important job is to stand firm, and not letting their bluster sway you.

Joe Biden in 2008, saying…:

…that going to war without congressional approval is “an impeachable offense”.

“Maybe he was just referring to Bush?”

Nope. He was talking about Obama. In re attacking Iran without congressional approval.

No, i’m not going to go checking Biden for a shelf date.

Over the weekend, the MN House GOP released its new K12 Funding bill.  Tom Scheck at MPR reports:

The bill, released Saturday afternoon, makes a slight reduction in expected growth for K12 schools, but increases the amount of money in the state’s per pupil formula.

“The debate in education this year isn’t going to be about how much we spend,” said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington as he compared his bill to Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget plan. “The debate instead will be what we fund and what reforms we make to the system.”

And that’s going to make metro DFLers squeeeeeeaaaaal…

Garofalo finds the extra funding in the per pupil formula by cutting the state aid schools rely on for integration.

And that particular bit got the metro DFLers into high dudgeon.  “It’s pro-segregation”, in many varieties, coursed across Twitter yesterday.

It’s buncombe, of course.  Have you been in a metro-area school lately?  They’re integrated.  And as the bill’s sponsor Pat Garofalo notes, we’ve been spending money on “integration” for a long, long time – and the more we spend, the worse the black-white “achievement gap” grows.   There is some evidence that integration itself exacerbates the achievement gap – which is not an argument for segregation (since if I don’t disclaim it, some lefty will claim it for me);

It also caps state special education funding at current levels, leading many Democrats to allege that it would force local school districts to raise property taxes to meet federal requirements.

To be fair to the DFLers, that’s their answer to everything from financial meltdown to rainy days.

Alternate – and, in this case, correct – solution: push back on the definition of “special ed”.  These days, it covers the things that most of associate with “special education” – teaching kinds with serious physical, mental and emotional handicaps.  It has also grown to cover a lot of politically-correct expediencies;  “special ed” has become a part of the Gender Ghetto in public schools, the place to which teachers shunt kids who zig when they’re told to zag.

And make no mistake – school districts love special ed.  Because while teaching the seriously handicapped is an expensive (and justified) job, school districts also looove shunting kids with “insta-Shrink” diagnoses like ADHD – usually boys – into “special ed”; it jacks up the funding, while barely adjusting the amount of “Services”.  In the worst case, it is a covert funding stream for school districts – one that stigmatizes the inconvenient (usually boys).

Special Ed could use a serious reform.  If this bill starts the discussion, then it’s a big win for everyone.

The DFL’s big response to  this – to pretty much everything the GOP has come up with this session – is that it’s a “war on the city”.   They’re doing it because they’re scared; a lot of their base flaked away in 2010, and there are signs it’s not stopping.

Regardless, Democrats say the bill unfairly targets inner-city schools and schools treating the state’s hardest to teach students.

“If you’re a needy student, you’re a loser in this bill,” said Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville.

It’s untrue, of course; if you’re a needy, inner-city student, you’ve gotten the short end of the stick for a generation.  That’s why you, the inner city parent, have been fleeing the public schools – for parochial, charter, and suburban schools – by the thousands.

The bill would also create a pilot program for low income students in poor performing schools to enroll in private schools at state expense. Greiling says the so-called voucher system would allow the state’s private schools to pick and choose which students to accept leaving the public schools to teach the state’s most challenging students. She says the bill is too aggressive.

“It’s not just rearranging the deck chairs,” Greiling said. “The whole hulk of the ship is tipped over and shaken out and spewed out in a different way. We have a whole new ship and that new ship is taking from school districts that have the greatest needs and spreading it around to other districts, small schools and charter schools.”

Republicans argue the voucher proposal is a pilot program for schools in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth and is aimed at helping close the state’s achievement gap. The bill would also dedicate more money for charter schools and smaller rural schools.

And the DFL is petrified with fear over this; they know that, given an alternative, the parents that care about their kids will take advantage of any lifeboat they can find.

And yes, it will leave inner-city schools with the biggest challenges – the kids whose parents just aren’t paying attention.

The bill – read it’s right here – will help students who need the help.

But it’ll reduce the subsidy the DFL has always given to failing schools, and the union that  made ’em that way.

And that’s gotta scare the crap out of the DFL

To: Mother Nature

From: Mitch Berg, Biker

Re: Springing for Spring

Ma:

By this time last year, I’d been commuting via bike for a week already.

Two years ago?  I’d been on the road for four days.

In 2008, of course, we had an ice storm in early April, pushing biking season back to the middle of the month, so I shouldn’t complain too hard.

Still, Ma – I love winter (or what Twin Citians call “winter”) as much as the next guy, but could we get off the can and on the stick here?

Melt, baby, melt.

That is all.

(And no, I do realize that a fast melt will cause all sorts of flooding problems, and I do not want that.  I’m just itching to get on the road).

The good news: one of the biggest spambot networks has been busted.

The Rustock botnet, an international network of virus-infected computers, had for years generated billions of emails per day, promoting unlicensed online pharmacies and cut-price impotence pills.

Good riddance.

But this was mildly jarring (emphasis added):

But on Wednesday, security firms noticed email traffic from Rustock completely collapsed. It has now been revealed that Microsoft, backed by US Marshals acting on a court order, seized servers that it’s estimated covertly controlled almost a million Windows PCs.

“We think this has been 100 per cent effective,” said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney in Microsoft’s digital crimes unit, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Well, that’s cool.  But back that thing up a minute.

Microsoft has a “digital crimes unit?”

Like, its own internal CTU?

OK, maybe.  But I’m just picturing what kind of equipment would be appropriate for a Microsoft SWAT team:

• Firearms: The Chauchat light machine gun, the Sten Mark II submachine gun, and the Nambu 8mm pistol (1)
• The Microsoft Cyber-Assault Vehicle (a ’77 Leyland Land Rover (2) with a TomTom)
• Surveillance Cameras and Laptop Computers by Hewlett Packard
• Arrest Warrant Printers by Lexmark.

What else?

(1) Note for non-gun-geeks; all three are legendary for their unreliability.  Sorta like Windows.

(2) Ditto

Tim Pawlenty hits all the right notes in the video announcing his “exploratory committee”.
He’s not the perfect conservative. We know this.

But compared to the rest of the field? We could – and probably would – do worse.
Some lefties titter that he’s “boring”. After two years of “exciting” star power, I think a little “boring” competence sounds like a really really good trait.

(And I don’t get “boring” from Pawlenty. He’s affable, low-key, and pretty much the guy next door. He’s also politically about as sharp as they come. How sharp? He’s a Republican from Minnesota, and yet he’s on the short list for President. Don’t get me wrong; the right, Bachmann and Gingrich, will need to keep him honest to the base. I’m fine with that too).

…that I wish I could transition into being a food writer…

…so that once in my life I could write a piece like this.

Being a Republican in Saint Paul, there’s some things you never get much chance to get used to.

Winning elections – so far – has been one of them.  We’re working on that with the Copeland For Senate campaign (for which I am, in the interest of disclosure, a volunteer).

Another one?  Getting a big fund-raising goal on short notice, and hitting it with time to spare.

But the Copeland campaign did it; in its first big hurdle – attracting $3,000 in donations to get an $8,000-and-change state match, and doing it in seven days.  Five, actually – the campaign actually topped $3,000 on Saturday (not all the money got in to the campaign until today), with the total standing at $3,400 and still no word on contributions from the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh CD conventions this past weekend.

So this is big news; I don’t know that a St. Paul GOP campaign has ever hit this kind of a fundraising target; the Copeland for Senate campaign has more money already than some CD4 GOP congressional campaigns can muster.  And volunteers are getting involved from all over the place, to say nothing of those from among Saint Paul’s plucky GOP minority.

Speaking of which:  if you’d like to volunteer…:

Phone: (612) 242-8051

Or you can email at Elizabeth.e.Paulson, which is a Gmail dot com email address.  We need lit-droppers, door-knockers, phone-bankers, sign-pounders, and every other kind of help a campaign needs.

Former Governor Pawlenty is making a “big announcement” on Facebook at 2PM Central (3PM Eastern) today.

And you need to “like” his Facebook page to see it…

I think it’ll be to announce he’s taking over as head coach of the Wild.

What do you think it’ll be?

Speed Gibson actually found Lori Sturdevant breaking her usual pattern:

Normally, Minneapolis Star Tribune opinion columnist Lori Strurdevant only questions why we plebians do not accept liberal orthodoxy as she has, not the orthodoxy itself. Today’s column on LGA (Local Government Aid) is a welcome exception, thoughtfully considering what State Representative Linda Runbeck (R-53A, Circle Pines) had to say about LGA. Runbeck chairs the House Property and Local Tax committee. Sturdevant asks:

What if, in 1971, Minnesota had not created local government aid (LGA)?

The column masthead has her answer:

If not for LGA, cities would spend (and have) less.

She based this on interviews with a number of current and former mayors, which made for a good column. She might have asked who has more if the cities have less. But back to the orignal question: what if LGA had never been invented?

For starters, we’d not only have less government – we’d have fewer of them:

Mayor Ness of Alexandia thinks 600 Minnesota cities would have ceased to exist today. That’s about 7 of every 10. But the real problem for most of these cities is declining population, leaving those who remain to support now oversized facilities. You can’t just get everyone to move closer in and unpave the outer ring of streets. LGA has put off their day of reckoning, but cannot save them indefinitely.

That may be one of the reasons North Dakota is faring so well; it hasn’t spent billions trying to save its’ small towns.  It’s been said that in fifty years, North Dakota will have eight cities left (the state’s census gains were out in the oil patch and, turning the “they’re doing well because of the oil!” logic on its’ head, Fargo, which is a good 200 miles from the nearest wellhead.  If you drive across the prairie, down Highway 281 or 200 or US1 or any of the other two-lane roads that bump and grind their way across the steppe,  you run into not a few ghost towns, or towns like Cleveland, just off of I94 between Jamestown and Medina, a town that used to have 200-odd people, a school, and – even when I lived 20 miles away, in the  eighties – the remnants of a little downtown. It’s around 70 people now.

In Minnesota, we’d be pumping state money in to help those towns of 70 pay for infrastructure that they haven’t needed in a generation.

Speed – Rex is is real name, but once you start calling someone “Speed”, it’s very hard to stop – turns toward the conclusion:

So I ask: what problem did LGA really solve? I answer: none. Government is a zero sum game. The money to prop up inefficient service providers must come from the more efficient providers. The irony is that while cities like Bemidji receive LGA, that same program negatively affects their population. Could it be that the only real winners are the really big cities who receive the really big slices of LGA: Minneapolis and St. Paul? Cities contemplated as payers, not payees in the original 1971 law? Cities with lengendary overspending and accountability issues?

That’s the point that the DFL wants to keep obscuring; while the original stated purpose of LGA was to help lower property taxes for cities whose infrastructure needs outstripped the population’s ability to pay – building water treatment plants and police stations and schools in towns that couldn’t afford them, then or now – it has become a subsidy for big, bad, profligate urban DFL mismanagment; the Twin Cities, Duluth and Rochester get twice as much LGA per capita as the rest of the state, and that’s with the “the rest of the state” including the cities housing a third of the population that get no LGA at all.

Let me also ask: what good would it do to double LGA? Would Minneapolis hire more police? Doubtful. Would St. Paul fill potholes faster? Of course not. Would our schools get any better? Health care? Transportation? No, we’d just get yet another load of community development and green energy.

I’m not totally opposed to some form of LGA as I said in my previous post on property tax reform. The economies of scale have shifted significantly. Acres served drive costs as well as population. And the State of Minnesota has no doubt burdened outstate governments with additional paperwork and expensive big city mandates on energy, pollution, and construction. But that LGA must indeed go outstate, not to the Twin Cities, who never did need it.

Well, that’s not quite true.

The Twin Cities engineered a “need” for LGA.  By tying essential services – police, fire and so on – to LGA, they essentially hold their citizens hostage, as far as (the media will let) the citizens know.

Remember when the feminists said if women ran the world, peace would break out?

Reality says not so:

The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.

Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.

If a “progressive” and an inexperienced president had a kid, what would it be?

A neocon!

Remember when the feminists said if women ran the world, peace would break out?

Reality says not so:

The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.

Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.

If a “progressive” and an inexperienced president had a kid, what would it be?

A neocon!

Senator Amy Klobuchar, up for election in a very short year, is sandbagging her constituents on the Senate Dems’ proposed repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

From the Minnesota Birkeydependent:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is one of only two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who have not signed on to a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and that committee is only two votes away from passing the bill out of committee. Klobuchar and Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl are seen as the two key votes on the committee and both have said they haven’t decided which way they will vote when the bill is taken up in the coming weeks.

Kohl, too?  Why would he sandbag his gay constituents?

Oh, that. So if a Wisconsin Democrat is going slow on DOMA repeal, does that mean maybe Wisconsin isn’t sliding back into the blue camp over Walker?

It is rather important for DOMA repeal that A-Klo get on board:

Minnesota’s Sen. Al Franken, who also sits on the 18-member judiciary committee, is a sponsor of the bill. In order to pass the committee, the bill needs 10 votes, and eight senators on that committee are already sponsors. Eight other members of the committee are Republicans not likely to vote for the bill. That leaves two votes unaccounted for, those of Klobuchar and Kohl.

Naturally gays, like feminists, don’t actually expect liberal legislators to do what they said they would during the election.

Or do they?

The Courage Campaign, a proponent of the bill, contacted Klobuchar and Kohl late last week.

OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy group, responded to the news in a Facebook posting: “Who knew Amy Klobuchar hasn’t taken a position on the repeal of DOMA? It’ll probably come as a surprise to thousands of voters (and donors).”

Hm.  Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

Greg Copeland is running for Minnesota State Senate in the District 66 special election on April 12.

A Republican? Running in Saint Paul?

Yep.  And he’s running to win.

He can’t do it without help, of course.  As we noted on the show yesterday, he needs to top $3,000 by Monday afternoon to get state matching money.  If you can contribute anything, we’d appreciate it.  And remember – once we get over $3,000 it’s not done.  Indeed, it’s just a start.  No contribution will be wasted.  Here’s where you can donate – and many thanks to those of you who have contributed already. Here’s the campaign’s contributions page.

Beyond money?  In a street-level campaign like this one, volunteers are everything.  And you don’t have to live in SD66 to help out!  Volunteer information is on this page.  The campaign needs help door-knocking, phone banking, placing campaign signs, and all the other jobs that a winning campaign needs done.

The Copeland For Senate site is right here.  He’s also on Facebook and Twitter.  Stay in touch – and please help out.  Minnesota – and Saint Paul, its capitol – don’t need another DFL ticket-puncher in the Senate.

Disclosure:  I’m a volunteer on the Copeland for Senate staff.

Talking with Ann Althouse about her run-in with the “New Tone”.

Ann Althouse's secret admirer.

Donate to Greg Copeland’s campaign here.

Here’s his Facebook page.

Full disclosure: I’m running media for Greg Copeland’s campaign in the Senate District 66 special election.

I tweeted that John Lesch – incumbent House rep from the 66A side of the district, and the likely front-runner among the three DFLers that are in the race, had gotten a zero rating in the 2010 session from the Taxpayers League, and a 16% from the Chamber of Commerce.

His tweeted response:

Let it ring from the hillsides of Saint Paul.

Indeed.

Let it ring down the bluffs along Davern, where US Bank abandoned the Riverbank office complex for better tax rates down the road in Bloomington.

Let it ring down the flat expanse of University Avenue, past the mom-and-pop stores that eke out a precarious living in Frogtown.

Let it echo between cavernous, empty office buildings downtown.

Let it bounce among the empty storefronts of Payne Avenue, surrounded by foreclosed houses and city bulldozers.

Let it roll like a foetid tumbleweed past the businesses in the Midway, who are already reeling from the light rail construction that is barely starting, and which the city and past legislatures – both choked with DFLers that ooze/oozed the same kind of blithe arrogance – did nothing to mitigate in their naive glee over a rail system the city doesn’t need and the state and feds can’t afford.

Yes, John Lesch.  Let it roll.

If you know a businessperson in Senate District 66 – or anywhere in Saint Paul – please tell ’em what Representative John Lesch thinks about their future.

Being part of the ruling party in a one-party system means never having to say “oops, I screwed up” – because what are your citizens subjects going to do?  Complain to government?

Saint Paul is a one-party town.

And people are certainly trying to complain to government.

There may be no more beleaguered person in America – short of a Detroit mortgage broker – than a Saint Paul business owner.  As bad as property taxes are in Minnesota’s capitol city, business taxes (glopped onto the state’s already high rates) are even worse.  And the city’s bureaucracy is legendarily hostile to small entrepreneurs.

And it shows.  Downtown’s occupancy rate (after you leave out all the buildings government is leasing) is up from its already-high rates; the warehouse district isn’t housing a lot of wares; Saint Paul’s Fortune 500s have been doing all their growing elsewhere, from Ecolab’s big R and D facility in Eagan to 3M’s shadow headquarters in Austin TX to USBank moving its Riverbank operations to Bloomington.

Still, people take a whack at it.  In the past 25 years, two generations of immigrant businesspeople, Viet and H’mong and Somali and Eritrean, have turned University from Lexington to the Capitol into a gritty, scrappy, but bustling little strip of restaurants, hair and nail salons, grocery stories and all the other little businesses that a self-contained community will spawn.  It’s not Rodeo Drive, but it’s not the dismal, vacant blotch it was in the 1980s.

Not yet, anyway.  Give it time.

Saint Paul businesses are outraged that the city, the Met Council and the State apparently figure that they can either ride out the building of the Central Corridor on their own, or…

…well, nobody knows:

The owner of AxMan Surplus wondered Wednesday whether the troubled actor Charlie Sheen was somehow involved in the writing of a report on the construction impacts of the Central Corridor light rail line on small businesses along its 11-mile route.

AxMan’s owner, Jim Segal, was among owners of businesses along University Avenue in St. Paul who took sharp aim at the Metropolitan Council and the LRT project at a public hearing Wednesday.

I originally wrote “the report was a whitewash”, but the US Whitewash Council threatened to sue me for defamation.

“Did Charlie Sheen help with that report?” said Segal, whose business is on University just west of Snelling Avenue. “That figure is absolutely unrealistic. It does nothing to address the potential loss of revenue faced by businesses on University Avenue.”

Segal, who estimated that AxMan would lose $100,000 in revenue over the first six months of construction, maintained that the $957 million project’s effects would be felt by businesses long after trains start running in 2014. “The pedestrian environment is going to be terrible while construction is ongoing, and there will be a permanent change to people’s driving and parking patterns. That wasn’t discussed in this report.”

At one point, he said the report, the “Draft Supplemental Environmental Assessment Construction-Related Potential Impacts to Business Revenue,” would be more useful as toilet paper, and he held up a roll to make the point.

The street is going to be torn up for years – and it doesn’t end there:

“The big problem is the major loss of parking,” said Mike Baca, the owner of Impressive Print, located just east of Fairview Avenue.

Baca ridiculed a business mitigation fund support program outlined in the Met Council’s assessment that would provide low- or no-interest loans of up to $10,000 for retail businesses expecting construction-related disruptions. “Who wants a $10,000 loan when you’re losing between 30 and 60 percent of your revenue?” he asked. “This project is going to destroy businesses.”

This blog will be documenting the casualties.

As [Met Council bureaucrats] [“]listened[“], along with Federal Transit Administration representative Maya Ray and Shoua Lee of the Central Corridor Project Office, one business owner after another laid out the damage the project is causing them and condemned what they see as a lack of cooperation from the Met Council and city and state government entities.

If you read this blog, you know that “hamfisted and stupid” and “Government construction effort” are more or less synonyms.  Still, this project just beggars the imagination so far:

Holden estimated that since the beginning of March, when construction began in the area, his business has lost $7,300 in revenue. Baca said he had to hire a driver to deliver print projects because customers are unwilling to drive to his store. Steve Bernick, the owner of Milbern Clothing, said he was promised that Aldine Street, the cross street near his business, would remain a through street during construction. Instead, it was designated right-turn only, forcing drivers to make an illegal U-turn to reach his store.

Diane Pietro, the owner of the Twin Cities Photography Group near Highway 280, said construction workers came into her business without identifying themselves and started tearing up a newly renovated hallway to install water pipes. She also said they were dismissive when she complained.

“This project is ruining my service,” she said. “Families don’t want to come in and sit for a portrait when there are workers walking in and out. I’ve gotten two parking tickets for trying to park in front of my own business. Both of our entrances are blocked and the sidewalks are closed.”

You gotta break eggs to make an omelet.

Jack McCann, the president of the University Avenue Betterment Association, sharply criticized what he saw as “a level of incompetence” in how the assessment was prepared. “It’s unfortunate that we’re even here today,” he said. “The amenities of University Avenue have always been great for businesses, and it already has good mass transit – the 16A bus line.”

McCann, whose Update Co. owns several properties near University and Raymond avenues, said renters are already asking him for a reduction of $1 per square foot for 2011 and 2012 to make up for anticipated lost revenue.

“What are (business owners) expected to do when they rely on on-street parking? That hasn’t been addressed,” he said. “If business owners knew there would be parking near their businesses (during construction), they wouldn’t need mitigation. But people mistrust the Met Council.”

Not without reason.

The comment period for the impact assessment will end March 31, after which the Met Council and the FTA will respond to comments as part of a final supplemental assessment document.

You’ve probably already heard this; in the wake of the emailed death threat to Republican senators last week, someone has sent conservative blogger Ann Althouse a threat, presented here in its vulgar entirety (emphasis added by me):

“We will picket on public property as close to your house as we can every day. We will harrass the ever loving shit out of you all the time. Campus is OCCUPIED. State street is OCCUPIED. The Square is OCCUPIED. Vilas, Schenk’s Corners, Atwood, Willy Street – Occupied, Occupied, Occupied, Occupied. Did you really think it was all about the Capitol? Fuck the Capitol, we are the CITY… We have the numbers and we don’t back down from anyone. We all know each other. We all know each other. We know each other from Service Industry Night at the Orpheum, because we’re regulars at the same coffee shops, restaurants and bars, we know each other from the co-ops, we know each other because we’ve had a million jobs each (and we all worked at CapTel at least once), because we live in every shitty townie house in ever-changing groups of 2 – 7 people, because we are young and horny and screw each other incessantly, because we’re all on facebook, and because we aren’t anti-social, life-denying, world-sterilizing pieces of human garbage like the two of you. WE WILL FUCK YOU UP. We will throw our baseballs in your lawn, you cranky old pieces of shit, and then we will come get them back. What are you gonna do? Shoot us? Get Wausau Tea Patriots to form an ad hoc militia on your front lawn? That would be fucking HILAROUS to us. You could get to know the assholes on your side in real fucking life instead of sponging off the civil society we provide for you every single day you draw breath.”

Thanks for that “civil society”, scumbags!

The not-very-fringe, over-entitled, spoiled-rotten near-left is the moldy underbelly of American society.

Every example of true mass depravity in recent American history – every one, without exception – has come from the Big Left.

No exceptions.

Answer for this, lefties.

Of course, whenever a lefty decides to run off at the mouth, a conservative blogger is there to humiliate their entitled, upper-middle-class asses.  In this case, it’s Robert Stacy “The Other” McCain (emphasis added):

The terroristic screed against University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse was posted on a Web account of Madison resident Jim Shankman.

In a Facebook status update about 9 p.m. this evening, Shankman wrote:

Because of a right-blogosphere campaign to silence me, I have been forced to commit Identity Suicide. I have never supported or advocated violence for any purpose other than self-defense against terror attacks by the armed wing of the American Right….

A “campaign to silence” you, Jim? And what was your obscenity-filled rant against Professor Althouse?

McCain also adds:

We have seen this before in American history. The lesson is a bit too close to home — and a bit too fresh in memory – for me to let it pass unmentioned. The privileged never surrender privilege willingly. They employ demagogic appeals to rally others to their self-interested “cause” by demonizing those who dare challenge them. And if someone gets hurt in the process, if some of those duped by the demagoguery decide to turn wrathful words into violent deeds . . .

Madison has become the Neshoba County, Mississippi, of this season. “Workers’ rights” is the Jim Crow of 2011 and government-employee unions are the new Klan.

Naturally, not a word from the MSM.

UPDATE:  Ann Althouse will join us on the Northern Alliance at 1PM tomorrow on AM1280.  Tune in.

The editorial page at the Pittsburgh New Tribune is noticing President Obama’s disconnect:

Much of the Middle East is ablaze in revolution, the thuggery of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi being the highlight of how low megalomaniacs will go to stay in power.

And, of course, the nuclear tragedy unfolding in Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami, is reeling the world.

Then there’s that little matter of a looming government shutdown.

But what’s the leader of the free world been up to?

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama appeared on ESPN to announce his picks for the NCAA basketball tournament.

Earlier in the week, he gave “exclusive” interviews to TV stations from around the country — including Pittsburgh’s KDKA — on “education reform.” (KDKA’s story catapulted pro forma local TV video stenography to news lows.)

Saturday last, when not giving his weekly radio address on the critically important issue of Women’s History Month, Obama was playing golf — reported to be the 61st round of his presidency — joking that it was not “playing” at all but an “investment.”

That was fast on the heels of his riveting summit on “bullying.”

Can you imagine how the mainstream media would have reacted to such disconnected behavior had it been a Republican president?

As re the Middle East, Japan and the budget?  We’ve had an entire month of “My Little Goat”.

This isn’t a matter of “optics” but one of judgment. This president is woefully out of touch with reality and how a leader should behave in such trying times.

Bring on 2012.

Windows at the District of Columbia COP office were shot out by a vandal with an airgun on Tuesday:

All of the windows of the officer were damaged…Workers believe the shooting was politically related.

Further proof that if there’s an “avalanche of political violence” in this country, it’s moving from left to right. There have been no meaningful exceptions.

The short, perhaps simplistic response to the US Census numbers for Minnesota, which will be driving the upcoming redistricting efforts?  The conservative, GOP-dominated parts of this state are succeeding. The DFL-dominated ones are floundering.

Voters – the ones that can – are voting with their feet.

The longer, more detailed analysis of the same question?

About the same.

Not just in Minnesota.  Southern, Republican sun-belt states are booming; the Democrat rust-belt is atrophying.

Rigorously Republican North Dakota?  Kapow.  And now, it’s not all in the oil.

The lesson is clear.  “Progressivism” equals decay, rot, death.  Conservatism equals vigor, growth, life itself.

That is all.

Empirical research has proven in recent years that people who favor smaller government, by whatever label – conservatives, Tea Partiers, whatever – are smarter, better-informed, better-educated and more generally successful at life, are generally happier, more generous,  and are even better in bed than big-government people by whatever label (liberal, “progressive’, yadda yadda).

And now, we have proof that not only are we as a whole less racist than big-government advocates…:

Social scientists usually measure traditional racism against African Americans by looking at the survey responses of white Americans only. Among whites in the latest General Social Survey (2008), only 4.5% of small-government advocates express the view that “most Blacks/African-Americans have less in-born ability to learn,” compared to 12.3% of those who favor bigger government or take a middle position expressing this racist view (Figure 2). We social scientists sometimes like to express things in relative odds, especially for small percentages. Here the odds of small government whites not expressing racist views (21-to-1 odds) is three times higher than the odds of big-government whites not being racist (7-to-1 odds).

…but that we long-abused white male small-government are, empirically, the least-racist subgroup of all, by a whopping margin:

Figure 3 shows that, among whites, Republican advocates of smaller government are even less racist (1.3% believing that blacks have less in-born ability) than the rest of the general public (11.3% expressing racist views). Thus, in 2008 Republicans who believe that the government in Washington does too much have 10 times higher odds of not expressing racist views on the in-born ability question than the rest of the population (79-to-1 odds v. 7.9-to-1 odds).

How social conservatives who aren’t necessarily small-government – stereotypically southern?

Yep – still half as likely to be a racist as a typical American:

In 2008, only 5.4% of white conservative Republicans expressed racist views on the in-born ability question, compared to 10.3% of the rest of the white population.

An aberration – perhaps caused by all that messianic hopey-changey twaddle?

Nope:

In sixteen surveys from 1977 through 2008 (Figure 4), overall white Republicans were significantly less racist on the in-born ability question than white Democrats (13.3% to 17.3%), and white conservative Republicans were significantly less racist than other white Americans (11.7% to 14.7%), though in most surveys the differences were too small to be significant taken individually — and in the 1993 survey, the relationship was reversed: conservative Republicans were significantly more racist on the racial inheritance question than the rest of the public.

Another traditional racism question — on segregated neighborhoods — was asked on fifteen General Social Surveys from 1972 through 1996. Though the percentage of white Democrats and white Republicans who slightly or strongly agreed that “White people have a right to keep Blacks out of their neighborhoods” did not differ significantly in any one survey, overall white Democrats were significantly more likely to support segregated neighborhoods than white Republicans (30.4% to 26.3%).

Quite clearly, the legacy of Nixon’s “southern strategy” – which was never especially racist in its own right – is long dead.

The Dems’ “racism of low expectations” is, in fact, just racism.

Maybe we need some sort of outreach program to, I dunno, judge people by the contents of their hearts rather than the color of their skin.