The Accelerating Skid
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In the last decade, St. Paul has lost jobs six times faster than elsewhere in Minnesota. Oddly, that era was governed by Mayors Randy Kelly (D) 2002-2006 and Chris Coleman (D) 2006-present. How can their enlightened DFL policies be costing us jobs six times faster than outstate?
Bush? Koch Brothers? War on Womyn? Global Warming?
Joe Doakes
my theory: just like poverty, abortion and budget deficits, the decline of our major cities is a bloody shirt that is worth more to the Democrats unsolved than solved.
May 8th, 2014 at 7:58 am
” worth more to the Democrats unsolved than solved.”
absolutely, you can’t garner votes and contributions from the likes of DG if her “lady parts” (as she so quaintly delineates them) don’t feel threatened.
May 8th, 2014 at 9:08 am
Randy Kelly was a decent mayor for a Democrat.
May 8th, 2014 at 9:53 am
All of the above, Silly Joe. Why do you think metrocrats are trying to shove everyone into the city core? To prevent inner cities from becoming ghost towns. Although I am sure they have a contingency legislation ready to allow ghosts to vote.
May 8th, 2014 at 11:05 am
Memo to city mayors:
1. Old brick buildings–love.
2. Parks built by the captains of industry that built your city–love.
3. Cool ethnic and specialty businesses–love.
4. Bars on the windows and insane regulations–OK, you lost me there.
Got it?
May 8th, 2014 at 11:34 am
The city of San Jose recently reported 30% of next years operating budget will go to pensions. In five years, 51% will go to pensions. I have to believe this trend will be more common than uncommon.
We’re seeing Detroit-itis breaking out everywhere Democrats gather to get their latte.
May 8th, 2014 at 12:43 pm
BS wrote “The city of San Jose recently reported 30% of next years operating budget will go to pensions. In five years, 51% will go to pensions.”
There should be a lesson here, and maybe a way to get leverage to solve this kind of problem (I believe the city of Duluth has a similar problem).
One of the ways that politicians gain power is to promise supporters wealth that will not be delivered until later — sometimes, as with gold-plated retirement plans, decades later.
Yet we have a democracy, and a republican form of government. The residents of San Jose in 1970 can’t dictate how the residents of San Jose will live in 2014. The 1970 residents might pass a law that says no person can own a dog that weighs more than 40 lbs., but San Jose voters can change that law whenever they choose to.
How can the residents of San Jose in 1970 dictate tax and spending policy in San Jose in 2014? It is taxation without representation.
It is also suicidal for a city. Who will move to a city where the bulk of property taxes don’t provide local services, but go to retirees (who may have moved to another state altogether)?
May 8th, 2014 at 1:34 pm
Mingo: Suicide seems to be a favored sport of major metro areas these days.
May 8th, 2014 at 2:51 pm
PM, why worry about the state of your own pensions when you’ve got folks like compliant Gov. Chicken to bail out pensions of teachers in Duluth? In Kali they’ll just lobby Gov. Moonbeam to do the same and tax “the rich” to pay for it.
May 8th, 2014 at 3:00 pm
Silly question didn’t the light rail project bring in a whole bunch of jobs to the city to replace all of the jobs that were lost. I guess the Mayor and the city council believes all of the phony stuff they are handed that something will be good for the economy.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
May 9th, 2014 at 10:19 am
Nerbert: a government union rep complained about that very thing during a union meeting. I was very surprised. Thinking back, though, maybe his beef was that government wasn’t sprinkling money over MAPE, or that MAPE is being held to a (more) fiscally sane standard than Duluth, or maybe that excesses in Duluth would “teach” more people that public employee unions don’t solve problems, the create them.