Whacked Priorities
By Mitch Berg
The city’s North Side and Phillips neighborhoods are foetid cesspools of crime.
Gangs prowl downtown, fighting and shooting and intimidating pretty much at will.
The budget is a disaster.
Their last fire chief was tossed for being a Lothario…er, Lotharia?
But never let it be said Minneapolis’ City Council doesn’t have its priorities straight. They’re working on banning wild animals from Minneapolis.
The Minneapolis City Council is considering amending an ordinance in a way that would ban any circus animals that are “wild by nature” (e.g. elephants, lions, tigers, etc.). This would in effect bring and end to the Minneapolis Zuhrah Shrine Circus. The amendment is sponsored by Cam Gordon and Ralph Remington. A .pdf of the ordinance with proposed amendment is here or you can link to it from this page.
The Shrine Circus raises tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for Shrine Children’s Hospitals. Last year, over 80,000 attended the Zuhrah Shrine Circus. Shrine Hospitals are a leader in spinal and burn injury care and research. In 2006, Shrine Hospitals attended to the needs of over 128,000 patients all at no cost to the patient or their family. The hospitals rely solely on donations through member dues, donations and fundraisers such as the Zuhrah Shrine Circus. Outlawing the circus will lead to a reduction in funding, which means children going untreated, research being cut or both.
Never a group to let untrammeled PC get in the way of doing what’s right, it’ll be fun to see what the Green/Looney dominated City Council ends up doing.
September 14th, 2007 at 6:23 am
Ban wild animals from Minneapolis? Can we get them to declare Keegan’s a sanctuary?
September 14th, 2007 at 9:07 am
I thought bottled water was their new cause.
September 14th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Wouldn’t dogs, cats, ferets, snakes, fish, turtles, and birds also fall under Remington’s ban.
Don’t worry it’s a silly law. It won’t do anyting to help anyone or anything. Of course it will pass.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Animals specifically excluded by the amendment are domestic dogs, dometic cats, cattle, swine, sheep, goats, horses, mules and donkeys.
So yes, I guess technically it would be illegal to keep a parrot, a ferret, a snake or any other assortment of “wild” animals. Unless there is another ordinance that would make exception for personal residences for those animals. I’m not sure if such an ordinance exists, but it would be a good question to ask.
September 14th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I enjoyed your piece, Mitch, but . . . I think I disagree with the underlying notion informing it. The problem with my city is that the government doesn’t have a clue as to how to deal with the crime problem, or the guts to do the necessary things in order to meliorate it (and there are things that they could do, if they had the guts, some of them obvious, some of them not).
It’s not a matter of being too occupied with other things; it’s a problem of stupidity and cowardice. If they can fix their own stupidity and cowardice, picking up time management skills would be a piece of cake.
If they had either, they’d still have a few minutes to make reasonable choices about what, if anything, to do about circus animals being allowed in the city.
September 14th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I don’t disagree with your disagreement with the premise I never really developed and isn’t really different from the one you bring to disagree with my premise that I don’t have.
🙂
September 14th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Yup. I would have called your undeveloped-premise-that-you-really-didn’t-mean-in-the-first-place a “conceit” — you’d have known what I meant — but I was afraid I might have confused angryclown, and, Ghu knows, that’s just too easy to do.
September 14th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
So, this is what my hard-earned and lost tax dollars are being used for? Wild animals? We have homeless people, people without access to medical care, communists and pro-choice people, but wild animals? This is where we focus our time and energy? Good grief. (shaking my head in confusion and disappointment.)
In regards to the crime issue, it just amazes me that in some states it’s illegal to spank/discipline your own child, but yet criminals are let go without even a slap on the wrist. How warped is that? Sigh…