Priorities

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SCENE: It’s1989, in the home of TONI and MELVIN Carter (JR.). Melvin is a police officer; Toni an aspiring politician. They sit on a couch in the living room, watching the news. Their 10 year old son Melvin the III walks into the room.

MELVIN III: Mom? Dad?

MELVIN JR: Yes, son?

MELVIN III: What’s for dinner?

TONI: We have no food.

MELVIN III: What now?

MELVIN JR. We bought an acquarium.

MELVIN III: Uh – cool?

TONI: Absolutely cool. You know how we love fish.

MELVIN JR: We also got the driveway cobblestoned.

MELVIN III: But our driveway was perfectly fine…

TONI: I’ve always wanted a cobblestoned driveway.

MELVIN III: But…why?

MELVIN III: It’ll set off the look of the1932 Cord Roadster I bought at the car show.

MELVIN III: The what what what?

TONI: It’s a classic car.

MELVIN III: I didn’t know we were “classic car” people.

MELVIN JR. We’re not. Just seemed like a good idea.

TONI: Provided we got a cobblestone driveway.

MELVIN III: But…dinner?

MELVIN JR: My boss is just going to have to pay me more.

MELVIN III: Huh

SCENE dissolves, flashing forward 34 years. Melvin III is now the mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota.

MITCH BERG: So we’ve got money for student savings accounts, universal basic income, reparations, and trying to build a new Rondo neighborhood on a land bridge over I94….

…but we’re waiting on the Legislature – and apparently the minority party in the legislature, at that – to pay for something that is one of government’s unambiguously legitimate jobs?

14 thoughts on “Priorities”

  1. People don’t vote for politicians who fix potholes. They vote for politicians who support abortion who may happen to fix potholes. They vote for politicians who send money to NGOs which then funnel it onward to east Africa; there may be a buck or two left over to fix potholes. Or not.

  3. Bwahaha! Sales tax? That’s diabolical. On gasoline? Food? EVs? Minnesota, Land of 10,000 cuts.

  5. Carter calls it a “generational” tax because you actually won’t see the benefits of the tax for a generation.
    The tax is expected to produce a billion dollars in city revenue over 20 years. That fifty million $/year, taken out of the private sector, where it has a positive return, and consumed by the city, where it has a negative return (read your Keynes).

  6. Carter calls it a “generational” tax because you actually won’t see the benefits of the tax for a generation

    Man, that is one slick grift. A generation from now and Melvin will be gone.

  7. For our taxes, we pay cops and firemen, get our streets fixed, and the city picks up yard waste from the curb every 2 weeks. Two years ago, the city proposed to raise taxes; city hall was mobbed, and the increase went away. Somehow they’ve managed to keep all the services up with out it.

    Imagine that.

  8. Reminds me of when my parents lived in the Philly metro. Having moved around a bit (my dad would joke that engineers were the migrant workers of the 90s), they’d driven on all sorts of roads, but none as bad as when your tires touch pavement in the state of Pennsylvania. My dad asked his co-workers why the roads were so bad. They said it was because of the harsh Pennsylvania winters, but couldn’t explain when my dad asked why the neighboring states of New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, and New York don’t seem to have the same problem with their roads.

    Roughly twenty years later, I made a road trip from Minnesota to visit my grandmother and a couple of old friends in the D.C. metro and in Harrisburg, PA. I recall paying $13.00 to drive about 150 miles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Unlike the drive down the FL Turnpike, which is one of the smoothest roads I’ve ever driven on, I got to hear the rhythmic thump-thump-thump for those many miles on the PA Turnpike. I shudder to think how much my tire rims would’ve had to be hammered back into a roughly round shape had I avoided the turnpike!

  9. Ian,
    I’ve long maintained that the fees collected on most roadways, is sent to a political slush fund. I’m begrudgingly giving Illinois praise for using their toll money to maintain the highways in and around the state. At least, I assume that’s where the money comes from.

  10. Saint Paul has a lot of government buildings because it’s the capital, and government buildings don’t pay taxes. That’s not fair to Saint Paul residents, having to host all the capital buildings but not getting any tax revenue from them.

    Cities from outstate should chip in to help pay for those costs, call it “local government aid” to Saint Paul so the city can afford to maintain its infrastructure for the benefit of everyone in the state.

    If Saint Paul got LGA from everyone else, Saint Paul could afford to fix the streets, right?

    Right?

  11. BH, it may be different now, but at one time, the money from Illinois toll roads around Chicongo was never accounted for year to year. Millions just disappeared. It’s a Democrat city, so no surprise there.

  12. Vlad, I always wondered how the Illinois toll roads scam adapted to digital toll passes. When I had to deal with Illinois toll roads, back in the late 80s, it was buckets of quarters. literally thousands of buckets of quarters being picked up every day and going . . . somewhere.

  13. Ruh roh…Ukraine is collapsing faster than woke banks.

    Ukraine short of skilled troops and munitions as losses, pessimism grow
    By Isabelle Khurshudyan, Paul Sonne and Karen DeYoung
    Washington Post
    March 13, 2023 at 5:33 p.m. EDT

    “Ukraine keeps its running casualty numbers secret, even from its staunchest Western supporters.

    Statistics aside, an influx of inexperienced draftees, brought in to plug the losses, has changed the profile of the Ukrainian force, which is also suffering from basic shortages of ammunition, including artillery shells and mortar bombs, according to military personnel in the field.”

    Zelensky knew the grift couldn’t last much longer. He’s got what he wants (pallets of US fiat currency) and Putin has what he wants (the Donbas and a land bridge to Crimea.

    Everyone is happy, except the warmongering neo-cons and Peso Joe’s handlers, who really don’t need news of yet another multi-billion dollar military fiasco.

  14. NYT today:

    “DeSantis, Backing Away From Ukraine, Angers G.O.P. Hawks
    The Florida governor, who joined Donald Trump in declaring that defending Ukraine from Russia was not a vital interest, drew swift condemnations from establishment Republicans.”

    Stiffing the Patriots®️, *and* turning his back on Degeneracy er, Democracy?

    Liking this guy more and more.

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