Reading the headline of this piece, my response is “sleep in, and don’t much bother with accomplishing much“.

The Strib is trying to shame people into getting the Covid vaccine:

Let’s apply this (for sake of argument) “Logic” to other patterns of behavior, shall we?

• People who are “child free by choice” are “demographic moochers”. Everyone else’s children are going to have to pay the taxes and premiums to support them in their dotage, as well as their own parents.
• People who live bike and transit-centered lifestyles are “fiscal moochers”. The taxes that pay for their bike lanes, paths, and transit routes and vehicles are paid, extremely disproportionally, by drivers and their gas taxes.
• Those of you who are getting vaccinated, as opposed to getting and recovering from Covid the old-fashioned way, are moochers on multiple levels.
• People who net out at no taxes paid in are “tax moochers”. The benefits they disproportionally receive are paid in their entirety by others.

Please see to this, Strib.

Thanks.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails re Kristi Noem’s much-attacked decision on trans athletes in SoDak high school sports:

Conservatives are throwing her under the bus for failing to sign virtue-signaling legislation that would have subjected her state to crippling litigation. The Keyboard Warriors excoriating her in the comments are not footing the bill, and none of their sons or daughters will lose the opportunity to play college sports if she stands up to NCAA.

Her decision is correct: do something smart, or don’t do it at all. If only we could get other governors to think that way.

Joe Doakes

If you’re a conservative, be careful over what you let wedge you. Or, us.

Pick your battles.

The DFL and the Teachers Union – pardon the redundancy – is rejecting the idea of allowing high school kids to take their standardized tests from home…

…because there’s no way to make such an important bit of work reliable and honest.

Democratic senators said Minnesota’s testing provider, Pearson Education, would not be able to develop a remote testing option in the next few weeks. It would be impossible to control the at-home environment like a classroom to monitor for cheating, they said.

“You can’t have anything on the board that would give a student an unfair advantage. How can we ensure that is going to happen at home?” said state Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton.

Huh.

Gotta hand it to the DFL. They know the value of keeping institutions, the ones vital to democracy, un-sullied by essentially sending them home on the honor system.

Yessirreebob.

A few regular-ish Democratic commenters have taken umbrage at my occasional statments along the lines of “Democrat voters have no critical thinking skills”.

Let me explain.

I say it because…’

…well, it’s true. Universally. Without exception.

Case in point:

“Shots in arms” – thanks to Trump.

Billions for schools – that, with the DFL calling the shots, are still squabbling about reopening.

And every dollar in the pocket paid for by five dollars taken from someone else – including your own grandchildren.

But no – don’t you dare assume the party that would write tripe like this can’t safely assume their voters are a lumpen, bovine mass.

Science: Draconian lockdowns are, at best, of no real effect in containing the effects of Coronavirus:

The Associated Press picked up on the theme over the weekend, finding that states which enacted tight restrictions on commerce and other activities performed no better in preventing coronavirus deaths or confirmed infections. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, imposed some of the most draconian curbs in the nation. Florida was at the opposite extreme. Yet “California and Florida have experienced almost identical outcomes in COVID-19 case rates,” the AP reports, and both rank in the middle in terms of deaths per capita.

The latter is even more significant given that California’s younger demographic means that a higher percentage of Florida residents were at high risk for serious virus complications.

The AP also highlights the contrast between South Dakota and Connecticut, which are both among the 10 worst states in terms of death rates. But the latter was much more aggressive in restricting the actions of its residents, while the former took a laissez-faire approach.

While there are obviously many factors in play when making comparisons between the states, such anecdotal evidence is in line with a peer-reviewed Stanford study of eight countries — including the United States — published in January that found “no clear significant beneficial effect” from stay-at-home orders and business closures.

Politics: “They’re not about containing viruses, silly deplorables”.

I received an update from the Bar Association lobbyist on activities at
the state capitol.

“To avoid a government shutdown, the House, Senate, and governor will
need to agree on a new budget by the end of June. Throughout
negotiations, the MSBA will be focused on ensuring that Minnesota’s
courts, public defenders, and civil legal services are adequately funded.”

Governor Walz has been able to hold the state hostage for an entire year
with impunity.  This is how Republicans free the state.  “Governor Walz,
end it now, agree to reforms to prevent it from happening again, or we
shut everything down.”

Anything less is not merely capitulation, it’s enabling.

Joe Doakes

It’s gotta happen, GOP.

We’re running out of patience with the excuses.

The good news: After hearing Ben Shapiro roasting Rupar last week on his radio show, I have to say it’s been amazing seeing that more people nationwide are learning what we in the Twin Cities have known for most of a decade: that City Pages alum and Vox “writer” Aaron Rupar is a really terrible “journalist” and not an especially bright man (read the whole thread):

The bad news: these days, competence and discernment are less important than ideological purity and loyalty.

And, Rupar being simultaneously a definer and beneficiary of Urban Progressive Privilege, he’ll never be held to account for it any more than Jim Acosta or Esme Murphy.

…and writing Bonfire of the Vanities, the classic satire on late-eighties class and race relations, I’m fairly sure he’d move on and pick another topic. Our class war (the race war is really a class war) is beyond satire.

Case in point: even though we know the Atlanta shootings last week were not motivated by anti-asian hate, the media is still playing it as an anti-Asian grievance, at best – and at worst, the media’s grievance pimps seem to be actively wishing yet another racial fault line into being.

It was 20 years ago today that AM1280 The Patriot – the station that I’ve been on for the last 17 years – changed to its current, conservative talk format.

For starters, if you’ve followed the history of AM radio in the Twin Cities (as one does), that’s a pretty amazing number. The 1280 kHz frequency was one of the first ever assigned in the Twin Cities – but in the decade and a half between my moving to the Twin Cities and March 19, 2001, probably changed formats, and often owners, at least annually. Business (several times), R&B (a couple), Classic Rock, Oldies (at least one), and even Dance music (in the early ’90s, almost as a “pirate” operation – the 1280 frequency seemed to be a metaphor for the ongoing collapse of the AM radio band

Then Salem – which had been running Christian-format radio for some time – bought the 1280 (and its sister station, AM980, which went through almost as many gyrations as the 1280 over the previous couple of decades), and converted it over to what was a new format for them, conservative talk.

And two weeks shy of three years later, they took perhaps an even bigger flyer – putting a bunch of local bloggers, only one of whom had ever done commercial radio (and one other, student radio) on the air to do a weekly weekend show. That’s where I come in.

So it’s an unbelievable story nested inside another unbelievable story – a bunch of guys doing a grass-roots talk show on a station that managed to stake out a piece of wan, forgotten turf in a crowded radio landscape, with both managing to hack out an enduring piece of Twin Cities media mindshare.

To celebrate, we’ll be doing a special (deep breath) four hour NARN tomorrow, featuing just about everyone that’s ever been on the show: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, King Banaian, Ed Morrissey, King Banaian, Briand “Saint Paul” Ward, “Chad the Elder” and Brad Carlson, along with a few of our former producers (Tommy Huynh, Jon Osburne and The Consigliere).

Hope you can tune in! It’s going to be just as mad and chaotic as those first couple years of shows were!

See you then, 1-5PM tomorrow!

As such, I have no idea if the City of Minneapolis is trying to find ways to throw the Chauvin trial, or to create grounds for endless appeals, each of them a potential spark for more riots and, of course, more springboards for more political grandstanding.

But if it were…:

Cahill’s decision followed a defense request to delay or move the trial in the wake of last week’s $27 million wrongful death settlement announced between Minneapolis and the family of George Floyd.

Chauvin’s attorneys argued that the massive settlement and the notoriety around it might taint the jury pool.

Cahill, who’s expressed his unhappiness over Minneapolis publicizing the settlement during jury selection for Chauvin’s criminal trial, acknowledged Friday that the high-profile nature of this case would be inescapable no matter if it were postponed or moved.

“I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case,“ Cahill told the court, explaining his decision to keep the trial in Minneapolis.

…I’d be at a loss for what they’d be doing differently.

Back in the early days of this blog – the early 2000s – I used to refer to then -Senator Wes Skoglund of MInneapolis as “A Lying Sack of Garbage”.    

It was deeply uncivil – but it was accurate.   If it came from his mouth, and it was about guns, gun owners, gun laws, gun crime, the Second Amendment, it’s legal and factual history, it was a lie.  Full stop.

Favorite pullquote from history – in 2003, he opposed Shall Issue carry permit reform because he said, in the Strib, that it’d allow gang members to get carry permits (a claim never fact-checked by any local media).  I’m fairly sure he knew better – but then as now, DFL pols could count on their voters being less than adept at critical thinking.  

It’s been almost pointless to note which Democrat pols have inherited the “Lying Sack of Garbage” mantel – it’s generally easier to point out the ones that tell the truth than the ones that don’t.   

But in this op-ed in the Strib, Senator John Marty strips down to his skivvies and rolls around in a slop pit if lies, slander and dishonor, putting himself on the short list to inherit the title.

It’s about his proposal to ban carry at the capitol – an attempt to roll back legislation from 2015 that allowed Minnesotans with valid carry permits to not be disarmed at the Capitol.   

It’s almost Nancy Nord Bence-level:

The sight of people flaunting assault rifles is becoming commonplace at political rallies of Trump supporters and right-wing causes. During the past year, Michigan, Oregon, Kentucky and Idaho all had incidents where people, armed to the teeth and dressed for combat, walked into their state Capitols to threaten public officials. These incidents made national news because the brazen intimidation was so shocking.

It’s so cute that the party that has no problem with “Anti”-Fa thugs patrolling the outskirts and aftermaths of their “peaceful protests”, that employs “woke” culture to intimidate dissent at schools, in the workplace and in the public square, and sicced the IRS on their opponents as suddenly developed scruples about “intimidation”.

Fifty years ago, it wasn’t this way. In 1967, when the Black Panthers walked into the California state Capitol heavily armed, there was strong bipartisan support for prohibiting the carrying of loaded firearms. Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and even the NRA supported the Mulford Act, which sharply restricted the carrying of guns, not just in the California Capitol, but elsewhere. Reagan said there is “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

When people on the left start quoting Reagan, stand by for a gale of mangled context.

Reagan’s response to the Black Panthers was among the worst of his few mistakes. Marty deserves to be told as much.

Now however, when it is largely white conservatives who are taking guns to Capitols, the NRA and the Republican Party seem to consider it perfectly appropriate for their allies to use guns to intimidate political opponents.

I can’t speak to Senator Marty’s sense of proportion or stability. But given that the people with the gun are all people who are over 21, have all passed training courses and multiple background checks thereby proving that they are better bets, criminologically speaking, per capita, than the House DFL Caucus, one might suggest Marty is crying wolf.

And either doing it ignorantly, or (more likely) presuming his Democrat audience just doesn’t care that much about the facts:

We do not allow people to bring guns into county courthouses, into many big office buildings in the Twin Cities or at Vikings, Wild and Twins games. Thirty-two other states require people to walk through a metal detector before entering their Capitol buildings.

Where to start with that graf?

• We don’t allow carry in any courthouse, federal, state, county or municipal. Anywhere. The 2003 Minnesota Personal Protection Act let the judicial branch make those decisions itself.
• The office buildings and sports venues are private property. They have the ability – misguided though it is – to ban firearms. It’s one reason I rarely if ever patronize major league sports.
• Re the metal detectors – so?

Now, we leave mere ignorance – personal or implied – and get into actual prevarication:

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus urged their members to show up, armed, to those committee meetings. There were about 150 notifications for one such hearing in 2013, almost triple the number in the entire previous year.

A hearing on gun legislation does not pose any greater safety risk than other hearings and there is no greater need for personal protection. Opponents of gun legislation carry guns to those hearings to intimidate.

There are other ways guns are used to intimidate as well. One lobbyist told some legislators whom she was lobbying that she carried a gun at the Capitol because she feared people lobbying on the other side of the issue, calling them dangerous — an insidious way of undermining her opponents. It is not surprising that the opponents reported difficulty getting appointments to make their case with legislators.

The 2005 law that allowed carrying of handguns in public allowed the same people to carry assault rifles and other long guns in public. That has led to the increasingly common sight of heavily armed people at rallies and protests. They are not armed for personal protection. They do so to intimidate and strike fear in others.

Minnesotans can consider and discuss gun legislation as rational adults; hearings should be conducted without armed intimidation. Consequently, I have introduced SF 2048, which would prohibit the carrying of guns at the Capitol and restore the law that blocked people from bringing assault rifles to rallies and protests.

We should take security at the Capitol and at political rallies seriously before there is a tragic attack that kills people. At some point, security experts might determine that metal detectors are needed at the Capitol. Unfortunately, metal detectors create an oppressive climate which makes a place feel more militarized and less safe. Whether or not they are necessary now, we should prepare and plan for the possibility in the future, including quick implementation if a credible threat appears. But for now, it’s time to treat the Capitol like county courthouses and other places that prohibit guns. Public discourse on contentious issues can be done in a rational manner without allowing some to intimidate others. Public safety will benefit as well.

Allowing guns at the Capitol in these divided times is a recipe for disaster.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus urged their members to show up, armed, to [the 2013 House] committee meetings. There were about 150 notifications for one such hearing in 2013, almost triple the number in the entire previous year.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus wasn’t founded until 2014. The MNGOC has never urged people to bring guns anywhere, and has always eschewed the idea of open carry at the Capitol.

Marty is either lying, or assuming his audience is too stupid to know better.

My vote is “both”.

Oh, yeah – and that 2015 legislation that allows citizens to carry firearms, legally, with a permit, on the Capitol grounds?

Marty voted for it.

“Look through any window, yeah. What do you see?”

If you follow the directive from the classic Hollies single, you can see a lot of things – smiling faces all around, little ladies in their gowns, bits and pieces of a typical Minnesota spring.

One thing you will not see, in this second Covid spring in Minnesota, is deciduous leaves on your trees.

So when Governor Tim “One Minnesota” Walz announced earlier this week that he and members of his staff were quarantining due to (yet another) Covid exposure, people – not the media mind you, just people – asked a lot of questions.

Why isn’t he vaccinated?

After a year, how does this keep happening?

And now – thanks to a friend on social media – another question the media won’t be bothered to ask.

Where the flaming hootie hoo is the Governor, where…

…you look through any window behind him and see green on deciduous trees?

Mankato?

I don’t think so. I mean, if you’re in southern MN, are the trees leafing out yet? Leave a comment.

Color me green with disbelief.

UPDATE – on second glance, the tree appears to be some sort of pine.

To paraphrase a certain former president, when you run a blog that roasts DFL hypocrisy and media indolence, you do get tired of winning. But not, apparently, this time.

North Dakota appears poised to legalize recreational marijuana – largely to keep the process under legislative control. North Dakota has a pretty liberal initiative and referendum statute – it’s relatively easy to bring legislative issues to a popular vote in NoDak.

I honestly don’t care if North Dakota, or for that Minnesota, legalize ganja. I’ve never used it, and never actually will.

But it would be great if it were possible to pass companion laws making it legal to taze people who sound like stoners. Because they really, really annoy me.

As predicted – Biden is claiming copious credit for things Tump actually did.

Pullquote:

When President Trump began promising a vaccine before the end of 2020, no one believed him. The Hill ran a piece headlined, “Trump’s new vaccine timeline met with deep skepticism.” NBC News published an article titled: “Fact check: Coronavirus vaccine could come this year, Trump says. Experts say he needs a ‘miracle’ to be right.” Similarly, ABC News ran a report titled, “Trump promises coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year, but his own experts temper expectations.”

Back then, vaccine skepticism, which is now nearly universally condemned, was acceptable at the highest levels of our politics. Asked if she would take a vaccine approved prior to the election, then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris said, “Well, I think that’s going to be an issue for all of us.”

Now, these same vaccines are a key part of the success story that Biden wants to tell about his response to the pandemic, and so the Trump effort has to be ignored or run down. Biden has referred to “the mess” he inherited, and Harris has said that “in many ways we’re starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year.”

I was intensely skeptical that there’d be a vaccine in less than a couple years, this time last year. It wasn’t a bad bet, historically speaking.

That Biden and Big Left are taking credit for the miraculous performance of Big Pharma is…

…well, not unexpected.

I always someone convincing me that Derek Chauvin can get a fair trial in Hennepin County. Really, the entire Twin Cities metro.

The evidence is not encouraging.

If your state budget is spending too much on old people and people with developmental disabilities, the easiest way to lighten the load is to kill them.

Joe Doakes

Far-fetched? Maybe.

But what are the downsides?

I bet a shiny new quarter Cuomo suffers no long-term fallout. As to the governors of states with policies no less apparently cynical and deadly – Massachusetts, New Jersey – who would know ?

What would this blog do without Representative Ryan Winkler?

Not spend nearly as much time mocking and taunting, that’s for sure:

Of course I’m selling Winkler short. He knows that after a year of squatting on small businesses, levying the worth of families by “essential”, non-essential or just plain above it all, and putting kids’ interests and science behind those of the Teachers Union, his claim is baked wind.

But Winkler knows the most important fact of all: the DFL base is complacent, ignorant and just as sodden with self-satisfied hubris and Winkler himself. If any of them could think critically about anything, they wouldn’t be DFLers.

Hope I’ve settled that.

…of constant violence that he encouraged not only with as many words but with as many actions, Portland, Oregon mayor Ted Wheeler says people are “sick of” the constant sturm und drang that has made parts of the city unlivable:

Portland became a hotbed of civil unrest last summer during demonstrations protesting the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. Similar demonstrations in cities across the country were largely peaceful. But in Portland, some of the demonstrations have deteriorated into widespread arson, looting and assaults. ADVERTISEMENT

Rioters in the city, who have called for the defunding of the local police department along with other measures, have on several occasions targeted a federal courthouse, spraying it with graffiti, setting fires and destroying nearby storefronts and other property.  

“The people who work here support the voices of racial and social justice and will not be intimidated from doing our jobs by the ugly graffiti or broken windows,” Scott Erik Asphaug, a U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, said during the press conference, the AP reported. “We do not confuse the voices of the many with the shouts of the few who hope to hold our city hostage by petty crime and violence.”

The first two things that jumped to my mind?

1. After ten months of Wheeler all but setting Portland up as an “Anti”-Fa staging area, I wonder what powerful “progressive” constituency finally figured it was time to rein the party in?
2. Reading Asphaug’s quote, am I the only one who thinks it sounds like they’re trying to pin the violence on…”the right”?

While this article bends over backward to sandbag Florida’s perfomance (pointing out that if California had Florida’s per capita death rate that its death toll would be lower, without accounting for the radically different per capita ages and population densities), it’s hard to get around the fact that Florida, run by conservative Ron DeSantis, is doing much better than its “competitors” in Covid resonse, California, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

My friend Sarah Cade Hauptman is prominently, and favorably, featured in a relatively decent piece in the relatively indecent Minnesota Monit…er, Independe…er, “Reformer” last week (where “relatively” means the piece spends at least as much space relating fact as it does gun-control movement propaganda).

The other guy? Not so much, but then I suspect if someone like Mr. Sharp weren’t featured prominently in a piece like this in a publication like the “Reformer“, author Max Nesterak would never do lunch on Grand Avenue again.

But that’s all fine – if there is a surge in people on the other side of politics who realize there’s a reason to keep government’s mitts off the Second Amendment, I can make limited common cause.

Here’s my beef, not so much with this story but with the whole “gun aren’t just for angrly middle-aged white guys” meme that’s been making the rounds this past year.

Don’t get me wrong – I fully support the idea that “gun culture” is “going viral”, and getting beyond their supposed “rural white male” ghetto. They seem to be – which is, I think, behind the Biden regime’s drive to try to get votes on as many gun regulations as it can, ASAP.

But when I read things like ““We’re doing our best to make sure that this information — which has historically been, you know, an angry white guy skill set — becomes something that is accessible to those that want to learn” and that guns are traditionally a “middle aged white guy” thing, I need to start responding like this:

When I first got involved in the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the 2nd Amendment was on the ropes. “Gun Culture” was all but underground in popular perceptions. Gun grabber groups were very open about their goals (“Handgun Control Inc”, the “National Coalition to Ban Handguns”, etc) and couild smell their final goal. Polls that today show 80+% support for “Universal Background Checks” today were showing 80% support for banning all hand guns and registering everything else. In 1986, there were eight “Shall Issue” states, many states where carry permits were unobtainable, and local gun bans coming on the books all over the place.

Since then, things have changed – almost entirely for the better.

The reason there’s still a right to keep and bear arms to argue about is because 30-40 years ago a bunch of people – mostly male, many but by no means all Caucasians, disproportionally Republican, who were indeed a lot younger back then than today, and yes, some of whom were motivated by a bit of pique – organized, dug in, fought a “Siege of Vienna”-level last-ditch battle for survival and, miraculously, beat back the barbarians at the gate, and expanded gun culture geometrically so that there was an actual movement to welcome everyone else to.

Welcome, new gun owners.

I’ll urge you to respect our collective history.

Now, let’s finish this thing.

City of Minneapolis reaches an independent settlment with the Floyd family…

…just in time to jeopardize the Chauvin trial.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called it a milestone. The city council unanimously approved the settlement.

Announcing the settlement in the middle of jury selection for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin confused legal experts.

“It was absolutely terrible timing, I would say for both sides,” said Mary Moriarty, the former chief public defender in Hennepin County.

Prospective jurors in the trial can still be questioned about their thoughts on the settlement, but Moriarty says no one knows how the news will affect the seven already seated.

“Most jurors I think would perceive [the settlement] as the city’s belief that Chauvin did murder George Floyd and that they are liable,” Moriarty said.

It’s assumed that it’d be very difficult to insulate any jury from hearing about the settlement.

Given the Minneapolis City Council’s performance over the past year, it’s hard to guess whether it was incompetence, malice or arrogance.

I say “Its the Minneapolis City Council. Why choose?”

The RINOs and Never Trumpers in the Republican establishment hated Donald Trump and did everything they could to obstruct, undermine and sandbag him.  Still do, except when it comes to fundraising.  Then, they want to use his name and photo to beg Americans to send them money, because they know how popular he is with the rank-and-file.

Donald Trump understands the importance of a name-brand.  His name is on his hotels for a reason.  President Trump asked the RNC to stop using his brand, the party refused citing a First Amendment right because he’s a public figure, and the President rebuked them.  No more money for RINOs.

They shouldn’t have needed rebuking.  They should have had enough honor to drop his name and image.  They should have proudly used RINOs like Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, since those are the people they’re actually hoping to get elected.  Using President Trump’s name to raise money for candidates who don’t hold his beliefs is deceptive.  It’s bait-and-switch, false advertising, consumer fraud, lying and pretty much standard procedure for RINOs and Never-Trumpers.

I hope President Trump does run as a third party candidate. Can’t wait.

Joe Doakes

I’m personally going to go with “focus ASAP around candidates who can straddle the divide – DeSantis, Noem, whomever – and get back to the business of trying to save Western Civilization.

A group called “Capital Transparency” has posted this video, of DFL Representative John Thompson of HD67A threatening to “beat the brakes off” a couple of its reporters, near the scene of a triple homicide out on the East Side over the winter:

Given that Thompson benefits from immense Urban Progressive Privilege – the kind of thing that would have been treated as “a terrorist insurgency” if he’s been wearing a MAGA cap – he’ll never be held accountable for this…

…although I suppose attacking the media is a greater intersectional sin than threatening Bob Kroll’s neighbors.

UPDATE: I originally wrote this story last week. Since then, I actually got a response from the Capitol Transparency guys – and it turns out Thompson was the aggressor (which wasn’t initially clear to me from the video). I’ve rewritten accordingly.

Mass transit.

Old and busted: “it’s about moving people”

New and Fresh: “It’s about smashing racism”.

The Met Council released its new plans for yet another extension to the “Blue Line”, which would push the rail line – whose usage has plummeted since Covid – all the way up to Oak Grove.

And it would appear that the motivating factor was…equity?

“As a Hennepin County Commissioner and North Minneapolis resident, I’m excited about the transformative benefits light rail projects can bring to communities,” said Irene Fernando, Hennepin County District 2 Commissioner and chair of the Regional Railroad Authority. “The new direction of the Blue Line Extension is positioned to serve among the most racially and economically diverse communities in Hennepin, while also connecting transit-reliant residents to the broader regional transit system. This will change the trajectory of what’s possible for so many of our neighbors — connecting students to education, patients to healthcare, and workers to jobs.

“To pursue this work equitably, we must also recognize that large-scale public investments can accelerate patterns of residential and economic displacement, and work together to ensure this investment benefits corridor residents, builds community wealth, and meaningfully addresses decades-long patterns of disinvestment,” Fernando said.

I’d urge commissioner Fernando to come to the Midway and breathe in all the “equity” that the Green Line has brought to my neighborhood. Come with a group.

I heard Met Council commissioner Charlie Zelle on MPR over the weekend tie the change in plans to…

…you guessed it…

…George Floyd.

Is “George Floyd” turning into a progressive branding gimmick?

(The MPR News site’s search feature being apparently nearly worthless, I can’t quite find the clip from yesterday. I’ll keep looking).