The North Loop Is Burning!, Part V: You Broke It, Strib. You Fix It.

Last week, I wrote a bunch of pieces on an editorial that appeared in the Strib the weekend before last.

The Strib complained about the growing street crime – in particular about the consequences of some local and higher court rulings that make enforcement against crimes like public intoxication and panhandling harder without specific legislative intervention.  (They also proposed the same impotent diversions on gun control that every DFL metrocrat shill runs to when faced with a wave of violence).

All the problems come back to one thing – a mayor and city council that may or may not be unable to grapple with the issues, but are certainly unwilling to interrupt the consequence-free virtue-signaling – like strong-arming local businesses with minimum wage hikes and sick time benefits, and social justice warrior-mongering – that obsesses so many of them.

Betsy Hodges in “action”. Crime skyrockets – but Target “Raises its minimum wage”.  Of course, technology has led to them cutting thousands of entry-level jobs, already.  Just like we warned you.  More to come. 

And this is the city council that, in large part, the Strib has supported to a fine sheen for the past sixty years.

And the mayor they’ve supported all along as well; I take you back to October, 2013, when the Strib editorial board endorsed Hodges for mayor:

Hodges is aligned with this page on the need for improved transit, including streetcars and enhanced bus service, as a driver of economic development citywide. As mayor, she’d play a key role in deciding the future of the Southwest Corridor light-rail project.

Although the school board operates independently from City Hall, Hodges says that as mayor she would seek to build consensus around the increasingly desperate need to close the city’s achievement gap, and she puts the right emphasis on early childhood development and prenatal health programs with her proposed “Cradle-to-K” cabinet. She’s talked generally about longer school days, more flexibility for administrators in teacher labor agreements, and support for reforms proposed by Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson.

Hodges doesn’t promise lower property taxes, but her record suggests she’ll be a strong steward of city resources and taxpayer dollars.

Hodges also promises to be aggressive in using technology to enhance public safety and would seek more accountability in hiring, training and disciplining cops. In a recent meeting with the Editorial Board, she acknowledged that the police union contract makes it too difficult to fire bad cops.

Does any of this – which reflects the express wishes and position of the most influential editorial board / DFL PR firm in the state – sound like what’s actually happened since the voters gave the Strib, yet again, exactly what they wanted?

Own it, Strib.  You got your wishes in the North Loop, as you have throughout the city.  You did your best to break it.  You fix it.

 

8 thoughts on “The North Loop Is Burning!, Part V: You Broke It, Strib. You Fix It.

  1. It is funny, in a way, that the Left so supports trains, of one sort or the other, over buses, since about the only advantage that trains have over buses in intra-city use is that trains require fewer drivers per passenger space than a bus. Supporting buses equals more drivers working at union wages. And driving a bus requires more decision making than a train, so should be rewarded more highly.

  2. Loren, it is actually not funny because it is intentional. Trains cannot go off the route, unlike buses. It is the ultimate urbanization/planning tool of the commissariat.

  3. The Strib fix something? Ha ha ha ha ha!

    Actually, most city trains, at 2-3 cars with a host of people to take care of them, are not really lower personnel cost. My stepdad put himself through college, for example, by maintaining DC transformers for the South Shore Line.

    The real advantages to light rail are sunk costs/existing capital in cities that have it, and it used to be that one steam engine to pull the cable or drive the electricity was easier to work with than multiple engines in buses, or in a doodlebug configuration. Otherwise it’s a huge capital/metal investment as it takes about 50-100 tons of metal to keep the carriages on the tracks, vs. about 10-20 tons for a bus. Even the metal on metal rolling efficiency is largely lost in this equation, and part of the Paris Metro runs on tires for this reason–they go to 10′ or so gauge and eliminate many tons of weight. I’ve been on it, and it’s far more comfortable than steel wheels.

  4. Meanwhile, Betsy and others on the City Council are NOW calling for an environmental impact statement on the “security barrier” for the proposed (and opposed) Southwest Light Rail Line, This has been their mass-transit wet dream for ages, but this latest move is another jolt to the SWLRT, which is only surviving now because of the Met Council’s commitment to producing it (and to ignoring any opposition). I think Betsy initially endorsed the line because it would get the thugs out of downtown Minneapolis and into the “target-rich” southwestern suburbs.

  5. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 09.25.17 : The Other McCain

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