When the cities of Minneapolis or St. Paul, or the Met Council, ask for public input, you can be certain of three things:

• They have long since decided what they want to do
• It is going to reflect the revealed egos of the decision makers involved, and how they want to manifest “moving their city/area forward“ in physical form
• See the first bullet. And the post title, for that matter.Nobody cares about your input.

With that in mind – the city of Minneapolis is “seeking input“ on what to do with the old Kmart property at Lake and Nicollet:

The City of Minneapolis wants the public’s ideas on how it will redevelop the former site of Kmart at Nicollet Avenue and Lake Street…In order to gather public feedback for the project, the city has opened a surveythrough Nov. 30.

The survey asks residents about how they currently get to the area, for what reasons, and what their future goals for the area.

The city is “seeking input“ so they can check “seeking input“ off the statutory list of things to do, before doing exactly what whoever controls most of the city council wants done.

It’s how the Green Line got built down the middle of University even though the “public hearings” excoriated the idea.

It’s why the SW light rail got built through a hill and under a condo even though publc hearings said “put it where people are”.

It’s why they built a soccer stadium at the most congested intersection in the state, and tore down the retail that was the anchor of the Midway neighborhood.

Fearless prediction: the Kmart site will be turned into four blocks of “mixed use“ multi story apartments, with first floor office and business space that will mostly be filled by “community“ nonprofits.

“Public input” on public projects in MN are always a sham.

Pro choice man shoots pro-life woman in Michigan.

Richard Harvey, age 74 of Ionia, Michigan, apparently shot Joan Jacobson, an 84-year-old woman who was gathering signatures:

Jacobson was canvassing against a statewide proposal to enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s constitution. Harvey’s wife, Sharon Harvey, supported the proposed amendment known as Proposal 3. Jacobson told The Detroit News Wednesday that Sharon Harvey became angry during their conversation, yelled at her and told her to leave their property…”I realized that I saw a man, and the man was standing right beside her,” Jacobson said. “And the next thing I knew, I heard a shot and I felt some pain. I was just stunned. The pain was in my back, and it was very severe.”

Her husband told the Grand Rapids TV station he used a .22-caliber rifle and fired a warning shot.

Not sure who Mr. Harvey’s lawyer is, but he has apparently given a statement to… local media:

“She (Jacobson) is still ranting and raving and she’s got this clipboard,” Richard Harvey told WOOD-TV. “She’s waving it around. I’m thinking she’s going to smack Sharon with it. So without thinking, I went to club it away with the rifle and my finger was still in the trigger guard.”

I can’t imagine Mr. Harvey is going to claim self-defense, but if he does, I don’t imagine “84-year-old woman with a clipboard“ will do much for his “reasonable fear of immediate death or great bodily harm“ claim.

And Mr. Harvey is certainly a poster, er, child for trigger discipline.

Les comically? Along with the Cayler Ellington case (of which more tomorrow), that’s two cases of people arguably inflamed by try ballistic politics, killing or nearly killing people they disagree with, since President Biden labeled Republicans “fascists“ a few weeks ago.

Not that most of this blog’s readers are especially fooled – but in case anyone was still of the impression that abortion activists want the procedure to be “safe, legal, rare, and to protect women who have been raped or in medical danger“:

I first saw that, and figured “it’s just some sort of sock puppet”.

No, it’s a blue check, meeting this is the official “women’s march” organization.

You know, if I ran a republican supporting PAC, this tweet (and many like it that pop up occasionally online) would make a dandy ad to put up against all of those gauzy, soft focus DFL PAC ads.

Tom Weiler is running against Dean Philips in MNCD3.

And here’s the music list for today’s show!