…not only about the shootout (not “riot”) between rival outlaw biker gangs in Waco over the weekend, but about the idiot left’s race-baiting response?  Yep – Kevin Williamson already has it, in this piece from NRO.

I’ll let you read the whole thing.  With Williamson, it’s always worth it; he bludgeons the incendiary mythmongering of the left’s activists and media (ptr) wings.

I’ll cut to the big pullquote:

The Waco police did not follow the lead of the Baltimore police; the mayor of Waco did not follow the lead of the mayor of Baltimore and declare an outlaw-biker free-fire zone. Instead, the police swooped in, arrested the better part of 200 people, started booking them, and peace was restored.

And nobody in Waco gave any press conferences about the need to understand the legitimate rage of the poor white peckerwood dumbass class.

And that’s as it should be.

This past week has been a really, really bad one for Governor Dayton and anyone who thinks he’s ready for prime time as a governor.

First, it the promise (since delivered) of a veto of the K-12 E-12 bill over a few hundred million in spending that a bipartisan majority in the Legislature had already turned down (in support of a program that nobody but Education Minnesota really wants).

And now?   He’s accusing Republicans of “hating teachers”.

Which certainly perked up my ears, what with having a father, two grandparents and a little sister who’ve been teachers.

Oh, yeah – Sondra Erickson, also a teacher, was not amused:

 Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, who chairs the House Education Policy Committee said Dayton should apologize for the remark.

In a statement, Erickson said:

“As a public school teacher with nearly four decades in public school classrooms, I am disappointed with Governor Dayton’s disrespectful remarks. Minnesotans expect their public officials to respectfully debate the issues facing our state without resorting to personal attacks. Republicans and Democrats passed a bipartisan budget that underscored our commitment to students and teachers including significant investments in proven early learning programs. Teachers deserve nothing but great respect because of their dedication to prepare our children with knowledge and skills for the future. Closing the achievement gap requires only the highest regard for those who teach and lead our children. I respectfully request that the governor apologize for his remarks.”

Of course, he’s not going to do it.  I fact, look for them to double down.

Because that’s page 1 of the Democrat messaging handbook.  Question how veterans benefits are paid for?  “Why do Republicans hate veterans?”.

Dispute global warming?  “Why do Republicans hate science?”.

Don’t like abortion, and think identity feminism has done a lot of damage?  “It’s a war on women!”.

Push back against a pork-barrel program that will at best do nothing useful for the vast majority of kids, but will plump up Education Minnesota’s and the DFL’s coffers?  “Republicans hate teachers!”.

And the thing is, 40-odd percent of Minnesota voters are stupid enough to buy it.

Why would he apologize?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, do you get partial credit?

Headline: President Obama isn’t going to let local police use tanks anymore, because Black Lives Matter.

First, what authority does the President have to tell local police what they can and cannot use? Isn’t this a Congressional decision, or a state legislative decision, or a city council decision? Where does Article I say anything about local cops?

Second, why did the federal government give local police military equipment like that in the first place, if they aren’t capable of using it wisely? What else aren’t they capable of using wisely, that we should take back? Assault rifles? Grant money?

Third, why are we taking away tanks when nobody has ever been injured by a tank? Why not take away Glocks since that’s what racissss cops use to actually do the killing? Oh wait, reading further, riot shields will require special dispensation. For a Defensive tool.

It’s as if he expects voters to read the headlines and begin to cheer, without reading any further.

Joe Doakes

to be fair, expecting that behavior has never let him down before.

MPR News spoke with Taye Clinton, the 10-year-old boy who was infamously maced, apparently by a Minneapolis cop, at a “Black Lives Matter” protest last week.

Frontmatter:  Now, since this city is clogged with people whose purpose in “life” is to find little political incorrectnesses with which to invalidate all dissent, let me establish a few things.

Too many cops see the world as “cops vs. potential criminals”; if you’re not a cop you’re a potential criminal.  There are bad cops, and plenty of just-not-very-good cops (I’ve encountered more than my fair share of the latter in Saint Paul, along with some excellent ones); more importantly, until good cops start turning in bad cops, it’s going to be hard for any citizens who cares about civil liberty to trust cops.  And I’m white – which I say not to disqualify my opinion (as some will take, or put, it) so much as to say “you think I’ve got cop problems…”.

15:00 And Counting:  Anway – Susan Montgomery brought little Taye to another protest this past Thursday. Riham Feshir and Peter Cox report (and I add emphasis):

On Wednesday night Taye and his mother were part of a Black Lives Matter and the Black Liberation Project march down Seventh Street to protest Wisconsin authorities’ decision not to charge a white Madison officer in the killing of a 19-year-old biracial man.

Taye, who’s also biracial, says he was frightened.

“At least I got Maced and not shot,” he said.

Now, let’s be clear; Taye is 10.  Perhaps he’s an incredibly sharp, precocious kid – a Mozart-like prodigy of juvenile perception of the world around him.  I’ll just say it could be.

It could also be that that’s what the adults in his life, including his mom, Susan Montgomery – who dragged the lad to a protest at 10PM on a school night (not that being out on the street watching people protest is any bigger a waste of time than a day in the Minneapolis public schools) have told him to think about the issue.

The idea that a kid – coached or not – would say such a thing is, itself, a tragedy.

But I’m at a loss to remember any 10-year-old victims of police shootings in any of the Twin Cities, much less Minneapolis.

Now, there’s been a long butcher’s bill of kids Taye’s age killed, crippled, maimed and injured by people waving guns around the cities.  I remember the first gang shooting I encountered in Minneapolis, 30 years ago this fall, when 16 year old Christine Kreitz was executed by the gang bangers she’d been hanging around with in King Park in South Minneapolis.  I remember the first such story I was involved in as a reporter, when a grade-school-aged boy in North Minneapolis was paralyzed by a stray bullet from a Bloods/Crips throwdown a block away (the boy was a solid 60º off the line of fire, in a second-floor apartment – which is, statistically, vastly more dangerous a place to be than an actual participant).

The Question:  So young Taye Clinton is thankful that he’s not the first 10-year-old biracial boy to be shot by a Minneapolis cop.  I can’t argue.

Just curious; has Susan Montgomery warned young Taye about the dangers posed by, to pick a random example, teenage high school dropouts who loiter about the neighborhood and get into random fights with other guys like themselves?

The ones who, statistically and tragedy, have killed a lot more little Tayes than every police department in the Upper Midwest combined?

And did anyone from MPR ask her?

I’m just curious.

Why are “progressives” so annoying?

Their policies?  Their browbeating and illogic?  Their exaggerated sense of their own intelligence?

Yes.  All the above.

But the fact that they are such whiners doesn’t help much:

There is something profoundly cruel about vilifying a person for their democratic choices. When normal people become targets instead of politicians, something has gone very wrong. This then is the real politics of fear and hatred. It is espoused not by the Right, but the Left. And the people who are going to make the next five years truly unbearable are not the ones who make up the democratically elected government, but the ones who desecrate war memorials and spit bile at anyone who dares to think differently from them.

The only cure for crybabies is to desensitize them to being pummeled.

It is, at best, useless for children. At worst, it actively harms them. It is a money suck that school administrators, teachers, early childhood experts, and psychologists think is completely unnecessary at best, and counterproductive at worst.

It is, in fact, nothing but a pay off to the teachers union that bought and paid for Governor Dayton.

And it’s the line in the sand that Governor Flint – Smith Dayton is drawing:.

Gov. Mark Dayton stood by his threat Sunday to veto the public schools funding bill, saying he has made his priority of enhanced prekindergarten spending clear for months, and vowing that House Republicans would pay the biggest political cost if it results in a long, messy special session.

“I will, again, I will veto” an education bill if it only includes $400 million in new money for schools, Dayton said in a Sunday afternoon press conference. His pronouncement came after he met separately with GOP House Speaker Kurt Daudt and DFL Senate Leader Tom Bakk.

In this next week, look for a lot of editorials, written with furrowed brow, commenting on “reckless Republicans” “shortchanging” “the children”, almost as if the DFL and the various editorial boards had coordinated their approach to the issue (perish the thought).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“Doc. No. XXX is stated as being expired, but was not listed on the spread sheet. Please make sure that this is inserted and in the future when you discover a new one please add it to the list. Thanks much.”

Another example of a clerical mind-set employee who knows the procedures, but not the reason for the procedures.

I started the spreadsheet as a way for me to track expired restrictive covenants that kept showing up in conveyances. Most of those documents were recorded by developers in the 1950’s, before suburbs had zoning ordinances, so they afflicted whole subdivisions with crap like “can’t build closer than X feet from the property line” or “building must be at least X square feet” and of course, the ever popular “cannot sell to colored people.” They expired under the 40-year law but must be manually removed each time I see one.

Unless the restrictive covenants reserved easements for utilities or drainage, in which case they can’t be manually removed but instead must be corrected to say “reserves easement.”

I created the spread sheet so I wouldn’t have to read the restrictive covenant document every time; instead, I’d glance at the spread sheet to see which ones had to be carried forward with corrections and which could be omitted.

The document in question is a deed that affected one single platted lot. It did not reserve easements. So I ordered it removed. Now that it’s been removed, it’ll never be a problem in the future. Do we need to list that deed on the spreadsheet? No, of course not. But she has to make a point of sending an email to the whole office reminding us to do it, just to be certain we know that she’s paying attention to every single thing we do, searching for mistakes to correct them, to prove how valuable she is. It’s “quality control,” you see. To enhance “customer service.”

Except it’s not a mistake, I deliberately chose not to clutter up the spread sheet with useless data. The employee knows the procedure but not the reason for the procedure, and therefore confuses the means with the end. Of course, saying so would be mansplaining, a hurtful and sexist thing to do, and elitist because I have a degree as well as ageist since she’s been here 30 years and it’s disrespectful not to respect her opinion, even if wrong.

You wonder why government isn’t fast on its feet – it’s because of all the ankle-biters slowing us down.

Joe Doakes

Government bureaucracy – where people are penalized for being too good at their jobs.

A few hours ago, we discussed the fact that public safety omnibus bill containing five very important expansions of Second Amendment rights has passed the House, the Senate, and the conference committee with a bipartisan majority.

Now, here’s what we need you to do about it.  Minnesota’s Second Amendment activists – GOCRA, MNGOPAC and the (newly-active) NRA are asking for your help.

And they’re asking for it today.  Even right now.

Get On Those Phones: Minnesota’s Second Amendment advocacy groups have called upon you, the Second Amendment supporter, many times to contact your legislators. And you – we – have delivered; your calls and emails have crushed all opposition in the past. All but the most ardent metro Democrats fear and respect Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement.

Now, it’s time for Governor Flint- Smith Dayton to know your polite, civil wrath.

Here’s The Plan: here’s what we need to do:

1. Call Governor Dayton and ask him to sign SF878
Telephone: 651-201-3400
Toll Free: 800-657-3717

2. Email Governor Dayton:.

3. Sign the petition to Gov. Dayton.

4. Share on Facebook and Twitter with hashtag #notSilentMN

We need to go beyond lighting up his phone lines.

We even need to go beyond breaking all previous phone call records.

We need, figuratively if not literally, to melt the capital phone system into a puddle of copper slag. We need to give the governor’s staff PTSD from the sheer number of incoming phone calls. We need to cause the capital phone system to violate laws of quantum physics.

Start now.

Seriously. Pick up your phone, and call the governor’s office at 651-201-3400 or 800-657-3717

Be polite – but let him know that an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the legislature is not to be trifled with.

Here’s the good news: over the weekend, an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of Republicans and Democrats, in both the House and Senate, voted for the public safety omnibus bill as finalized by the conference committee.

How overwhelming was the majority?

Here’s how overwhelming:

That is a veto proof majority in both the House and the DFL-controlled Senate.

How important is this? This bill will:

• Abolish the capital felony trap – by recognizing that the Capitol police have instant access to the database of carry permit holders, just like every other cop in the state of Minnesota.
• Bar the governor for ordering the confiscation of firearms during emergencies. The governor of Minnesota has immense, wide-sweeping emergency powers, almost completely unregulated by law. This will prevent the situation that new Orleans residents ran into after Hurricane Katrina, with government officials and police going door-to-door to confiscate firearms, rendering citizens defenseless in the face of looters.
• Legalize the ownership of federally licensed suppressors – mufflers for guns.
• Allow Minnesotans to buy a long arms from non-contiguous states.
• Make Minnesota permits reciprocal with many more neighboring states. This is great if you, hypothetically, constantly wind up having to stop at gas stations in Moorhead or East Grand Forks, to avoid inadvertently becoming a felon in North Dakota. Again, hypothetically.

So that’s the good news.

The Bad News – Governor Flint- Smith Dayton has said that he will veto the bill, over the suppressor provision.

Of course, the photo above – the votes for a bipartisan, vetoproof majority passing the bill – might give Governor Flint-Smith Dayton pause. Getting a veto overridden is embarrassing.

You know what else would give her him pause?

We’ll talk about that at noon.

Governor Flint-Smith Dayton is threatening to veto the budget deal over the lower level of funding promised for pre-kindergarten.

I’m not sure that our legislature – much less our governor – is smart enough to fight the battle based on something like “what’s best for children”…

…but in case any legislators are focused on that, psychology and even teachers are starting to think that jamming down academics with young children is at best of no value, and at worst counterproductive in the long run:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201505/early-academic-training-produces-long-term-harm (I’ve added emphasis):

A number of well-controlled studies have compared the effects of academically oriented early education classrooms with those of play-based classrooms (some of which are reviewed here, in an article by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn McLaughlin,and Joan Almon).[1] The results are quite consistent from study to study: Early academic training somewhat increases children’s immediate scores on the specific tests that the training is aimed at (no surprise), but these initial gains wash out within 1 to 3 years and, at least in some studies, are eventually reversed. Perhaps more tragic than the lack of long-term academic advantage of early academic instruction is evidence that such instruction can produce long-term harm, especially in the realms of social and emotional development.

When you start regimenting kids bright and early, is it a surprise they grow up less able to think for themselves?

For example, in the 1970s, the German government sponsored a large-scale comparison in which the graduates of 50 play-based kindergartens were compared, over time, with the graduates of 50 academic direct-instruction-based kindergartens.[2] Despite the initial academic gains of direct instruction, by grade four the children from the direct-instruction kindergartens performed significantly worse than those from the play-based kindergartens on every measure that was used. In particular, they were less advanced in reading and mathematics and less well adjusted socially and emotionally. At the time of the study, Germany was gradually making a switch from traditional play-based kindergartens to academic ones. At least partly as a result of the study, Germany reversed that trend; they went back to play-based kindergartens. Apparently, German educational authorities, at least at that time, unlike American authorities today, actually paid attention to educational research and used it to inform educational practice.

Of course, universal “free” Pre-K isn’t about educating children, much less making them grow up to be better, happier, smarter people.

It’s about providing more jobs for Governor Flint-Smith’s Dayton’s biggest contributors, and thereby more dues for the DFL.

Universal pre-K may be the best possible advertisement for home schooling.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

White cop shoots Black guy in Madison, prosecutor declines criminal charges against cop, riots ensue. Another gentle giant not doin nuttin, shot by racissss cops.

Well, maybe doing nothing wrong by local community standards, which allow for tearing things up, jumping on cars, beating on people, being doped up, etc. That might be ordinary, normal, accepted behavior in that neighborhood’s culture. But by broader, more civilized standards of law-abiding society, yes, he was doing something wrong, several things. So cops are called, cop strolls in, no big deal, just another moron to talk to like any other day. Suddenly the gentle giant attacks, cop reacts, now the protests and death threats start.

I’m not reflexively pro-cop (that reflex was killed off by the Mike Sauro fiascos). But a big guy doped up and causing trouble is not an innocent victim on the way to church, either. Turning every law enforcement encounter into a racial extravaganza won’t lead to a more peaceful community.

Of course, for some people, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Joe Doakes

AKA “A crisis not to be wasted”.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

I will be actually be taking the day off today – but Brad Carlson will be filling in from 1-3PM today!

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

“Protect” Minnesota – the gun grabber group that’s been washed away from the front of Minnesota’s gun-grabber crowd by a sea of Michael Bloomberg money – is having an event.

And not just any event.  Nosirreebob – it’s their “signature” event (emphasis added):

Dear Heinrich,

I’m pleased to invite you to our signature annual event at the Capri Theater on Monday, June 29.

SAFE: A Benefit to End Gun Violence is a celebration of community and safety featuring a musical theater concert to benefit Protect Minnesota. Directed by Joshua Campbell, SAFE! is a concert with performances from some of the most renowned local theater artists: Aimee K. Bryant, Ann Michaels, Jennifer Grimm, Kasono Mwanza, Tre Searles, and Katie Bradley.

So I wonder if the esteemed cast and crew are getting paid for this “benefit?”  Director Josh Campbell appears to be a working actor/director (much respect!) – i.e., one would expect he’d be too smart to do it gratis.

The show features songs from pop, rock, and musical theater that celebrate safety and community with short plays, scenes, and monologues reflecting on gun violence interspersed throughout. If you’ve been with us the past two years, you know that this will be a show you won’t want to miss.

Now, this will be the third year for this particular event (or so Rep. Martens’ email says); representatives of the Human Rights movement have found themselves barred from the event in the past.

But I may just try to make a point of being there on the “red carpet” to see who shows up

(It’s Monday, June 29th at 6:30 PM at the Capri Theater, 2027 West Broadway)

…don’t you dare claim the media is biased to the left.

That Gorgeous George – let’s not forget, a former Clinton chief of staff and lifelong Democrat apparatchik – is a “journo” who’s in the bag for the left should surprise nobody who had been paying attention for this past twenty-odd years.

The real question, to me?  What percentage of other movers and shakers at the Big Three, the big Newspapers, and NPR/CPB are, if not in the same fiscal weight class as Stephanopoulos, at least intellectually just as far in the bag?

My educated guess is “just short of all of them”, but I can be convinced either way.

…rather, ask why you’re doing it, and others can/will not.

MPR’s Bob Collins ran a piece earlier this week about “How MPR is able to Broadcast from Cuba“.

And just to be clear – he was focusing on how they dealt with the technical hurdles of broadcasting from a country that is the Northwestern Quatrosphere’s little enclave of the Third World.  And I’ll cop to it; the former radio producer in me geeks out at that part:

…when [MPR technical geek Rob Byers] and his team sat down and examined the map of undersea cables in the Caribbean, they found almost no connectivity to the rest of the world, save for two connections to Venezuela. But because both MPR’s sibling company American Public Media and Cuban state radio (ICRT) are associate members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), it was possible to make a satellite connection from Cuban radio in Havana to a downlink in Geneva, Switzerland, and from there to a site in London that could connect to MPR in St. Paul.

Collins adds:

They found a better way. A direct satellite uplink from Havana to St. Paul, using a downlink at the Fitzgerald Theater and a backup site at Twin Cities Public Television.

Geek vibes.

But Collins also hastens (or hastened, after the subject came up in the comments):

…people asked about political and legal hurdles. I checked back with Rob and Brian. Brian says they’ve asked from the start whether there would be any editorial oversight of the broadcasts by Cuban authorities and they have been assured there would not be.

Rob says he has not encountered legal hurdles.

Right – but MPR is apparently going to Cuba to broadcast the Minnesota Orchestra concert – a fairly uncontroversial-looking program of Beethoven, Bernstein, Prokofiev, and Cuban composer Alejandro García Caturla.

Is it especially controversial to note that there’s a reason they didn’t ask (and I’m going to skip past the cliches here) Michael Medved or Dennis Prager or, um, yours truly to broadcast from Cuba.   The Castro regime isn’t looking for a challenge, and MPR will be the last media outlet to deliver one.

And on the one hand, that’s fine – challenging the authoritarian status quo isn’t MPR Classical’s mission.

On the other hand – Cuba is a human rights offender on a massive scale.  The plight of Cuban dissendent journalists – or any dissidents, really – is the sort of thing that makes anyone who thinks freedom is a good thing a little queasy.

And I have to wonder – from what other authoritarian basket case would MPR pursue a broadcast?

Just mentioning this in passing:

Apropos not much.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas of the Guardian on the Roland TR808 drum machine, which turns 35 this year:

It struck a chord as an instrument that truly reflected the 80s. “Home computers were coming on the scene, and it just fitted in with that,” says Joe Mansfield, a drum machine collector who wrote this year’s pictorial history Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession. “It sounded futuristic, what you thought a computer would sound like if it could play the drums.” It began to seep into the mainstream, as the backbeat to Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing, and across the Atlantic to the UK into, firstly, the industrial and post-punk scenes, where Graham Massey of Manchester acid house act 808 State first encountered it.

 “It had that industrial heritage, but had that soul heritage,” he says. “The Roland gear began to be a kind of Esperanto in music. The whole world began to be less separated through this technology, and there was a classiness to it – you could transcend your provincial music with this equipment.” Massey made hip-hop with the 808, and then, because he couldn’t afford anything else, used it for house too, making “dense, jungle-like” tracks that also deployed the 909. “On the 909 the kick was a bit more in your chest, a bit more of an aggressive drum machine. The 808 almost seems feminine next to it … the cowbell on the 808, that’s the thing that says mid-80s R&B to me – SOS Band, big dancefloor anthems, which were a massive thing in the north-west of England. It wasn’t just nerdy DJ culture, it was a ‘ladies’ night’ kind of music.”

It was a commercial flop – but the TR808 has influenced music of the 1980s through 2010s the same way the Fender Stratocaster influenced the fifties through the seventies.

No, really; you’ve heard it, whether you know it or not:

When I bought my first multitrack recorder (a Fostex four-track cassette machine), I got the next generation – smaller and cheaper, not more authentic-sounding.  And while the sound quality of digital sampling drum simulators, software and hardware, has improved, they haven’t done much to improve the control a producer has over the way his “drummer” plays.  Trying to make drum “loops” on a computer just isn’t the same.

I’ve written a few blog posts over the years about my occasional trips to Saint Paul City Hall.  There, before you go into the building, you go through, not so much a metal-detector, but an insatiable electronic would-be petty deity.  You could walk in there buck naked, and it’d beep, and the surly, cranky security guard would have you stand with your arms out and wand you.  I’ve literally made a game of it over time; I’ve tried to remove every possible bit of metal from my person.  The accursed machine has beeped, literally, over the metal in my shoes’ shoelace eyelets.

And I’ve joked that maybe Saint Paul’s government would be more responsive, and responsible, if the machine and the sheriff’s deputies weren’t there; if the city government had to concern itself with irate citizens the way the rest of us do.

And I was surprised – or, put another way, “not surprised in the least” – to see that there’s precedent for this.

I say take away the metal detectors, and let government at all levels deal with its own security.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The bird flu is killing turkeys by the millions and now Iowa chickens. If it kills them all, my doctor won’t be able to insist I lose weight by eating low-fat boneless, skinless, tasteless, dry white meat. Silver lining.

Joe Doakes

Heaven help us all if the Swine Flu makes a comeback.

Back in 2008, I went without a car for ten months, opting to save gas money and walk, bike, or (as a last resort) use transit to get around.

After ten months, I was in the best shape I’d been since college (thanks, biking!) – and agog at the amount of time I’d wasted waiting for late/absent buses, and sitting on buses clanking their stately, sluggish way down backstreets.

Transit – unless one is lucky enough to live, work, socialize, go to a doctor and churches that are all within a quarter-mile of train stops – is slooooooooow,  Wanting to get places fast on transit is like trying to shoot the weather along.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; the bus is slow, unreliable and annoying for everyone.

But don’t tell the Strib.  They’re on a roll.

What’s In A Headline?  The headline in of this Strib story, unlike the hed of this posting, is not intended to be satire:

Report says transit times extra long for commuters of color

I saw the headline, and thought “What?  Does Metro Transit sandbag black and Latino commuters?  Do lines from North Minneapolis and the West Side and Frogtown run slower than white people buses?  Doesn’t #BlackTimeMatter?

So I read further (and added emphasis):

Twin Cities transit users of color spend almost 160 additional hours a year commuting when compared to whites who drive to work solo. That’s according to a report out Tuesday from four advocacy groups opposing cuts to public transportation funding. 

The report “It’s About Time: The Transit Time Penalty and Its Racial Implications” cited infrequent service, indirect routes, delays, overcrowded vehicles, and insufficient shelter at bus stops as factors that contribute to a transit time penalty that adds time and stress to each commute. For Blacks and Asians who used public transit, that totaled an extra 3.5 weeks a year and for Latinos it was 4 hours a year of additional time required to travel between two points by public transportation, compared with going by car.

That’s the lede.

You have to get to the final graf of the story to also see that “5 percent of whites and Minnesotans of Asian descent commute by public transit, 8 percent of Latinos, 10 percent of Blacks, and 29 percent of American Indians” use transit as their primary means of getting to work.

So why doesn’t the Strib report lead with “A Transit-Centered Life Wastes A Lot Of Time?” or “Cars Are More Time-Efficient?”  Do they think a white person who commutes doesn’t waste the same exact amount of time?  Because I’m here to testify.

It’s too much to expect the Strib to note that the report was gurgitated by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, TakeAction Minnesota, ISAIAH and the Center for Popular Democracy – four groups that have been working for decades to make sure that poor people are warehoused in the inner city and forced to be even more dependent on the arrogant vagaries of transit than the rest of us – and the report seeks funding to provide cars to black families.

Just kidding.  They want more funding to spread more slow, unreliable transit to everyone else.

Chicago’s mountain of debt has been downgraded to “Junk”:

“Whether or not the current statutes that govern Chicago’s pension plans stand, we expect the costs of servicing Chicago’s unfunded liabilities will grow, placing significant strain on the city’s financial operations absent commensurate growth in revenue and/or reductions in other expenditures,” the agency said in a release.

The downgrade affected $8.9 billion of general obligation, sales, and motor fuel tax debt, according to Moody’s.

The firm said its downgrades could trigger up to $2.2 billion in accelerated payments on Chicago debt.

Who knew – trying to run a spending/”service”-heavy regime based on systematically transferring money from producers to consumers (with a healthy gratuity for the political class in between) is no way to run a government?

Some of us did, anyway.

How long ’til Saint Paul, Duluth and Minneapolis follow suit?

When Minnesota DFLers talk “bipartisanship” and “getting beyond politics”, you have to remember – it’s just talk.

The DFL is stalling on a budget deal, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk is already talking about a special session – with a high likelihood of no agreement, followed by the shutdown that, many think, the DFL has been angling for all along:

Bakk signaled Tuesday that he’s already given some thought to a special session scenario, mentioning in an interview that he’d seen polling data indicating that Republicans would bear a greater share of the shutdown blame. “It’s not good for the institution, and I would certainly rather that it not happen,” he said. “There’s no reason this can’t get done.”

Other than “Tom Bakk would rather benefit the DFL than “the institution”, of course.

I got this email (via my pseudonym, Mr. Beria) from the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” borg last week, for a meeting that’s happening today.

I’ll let it sit and ferment on its own, with a bit of emphasis added by me:

Dear Lavrentiy,

I am excited to invite you to support my good friend, Hillary Clinton, in her presidential campaign. Over the next 18 months I will be doing all I can to help elect this great progressive champion. Will you join me?

Tomorrow, the Hillary for America campaign will hold a strategy session for community leaders and volunteers to jumpstart grassroots organizing efforts across Minnesota. I want to personally invite you to join me, Tina Smith, and others at the campaign’s first grassroots organizational meeting.

All the details are below. I hope to see you on Tuesday!

Thank you for your support,

Mark

That’s Mark Dayton, in case the folksy, “grassroots” delivery of the plutocrat funded by plutocrats asking me to support another plutocrat supported by more, bigger plutocrats threw you off.

There’s just too much of value in this piece by Kurt Schlichter to pull-quote any of it.

Just read the whole thing.

I’ve had the occasional liberal complain to me that I’m being overly broad when I say that all gun control efforts are rooted in racism.

Why yes, of course, gun control’s history is rooted in the ongoing effort to disarm black slaves, freedmen, and citizens from colonial times through the Jim Crow era.

And yes, modern gun control was launched as a white liberal response to the inner-city riots of 1968.

“But surely things have changed”, they say.

Surely they have not; the secret committee that issues carry permits in Illinois, with no review and no accountability, is denying permits to law-abiding black people at a rate vastly higher than white Illinoisans (Illinosians?  Illlinoids?):

One such example, Michael Thomas was puzzled that as a former Air Force reservist who routinely carried a gun during military service and has never had a run-in with the law, was turned down, even though the law does not afford police the discretion to deny permits to those who meet the prerequisites and who are not legally prohibited. But Thomas is just one of more than 800 people who have been denied licenses by the board. This board meets behind closed doors and keeps its records and reasoning secret. Even when applicants meet all the criteria, the board says they have no obligation to explain themselves… even when it seems clear that the only disqualifying factor is the color of the applicant’s skin.

Thomas wrote to the Illinois State Police, requesting a review of the decision, assuming that it must have been a mistake.

“I have never been arrested or convicted of any offense, either misdemeanor or felony, in the state of Illinois or any other state,” Thomas explained in his letter. “I have no criminal record of any type.”

The state police sent him a letter back, saying that the board’s decisions couldn’t be reviewed. Thomas, they explained would have to petition a court in order to appeal.

Fortunately, guns remain the one area where the the tide of liberty is rising, and all boats are being lifted: 

So that’s what Thomas did. He joined 193 other Illinoisans – many of whom happen to be African Americans – in filing lawsuits against the state police. Interestingly, few Caucasians who applied for the permit in Illinois have found themselves denied, even when their records are a bit more tarnished (though without felonies), than Thomas’s squeaky-clean background.

It’d be unseemly for a Second Amendment supporter to deny a state – even a state as patriarchal and authoritarian as Illinois – its’ Tenth Amendment rights to administer laws reserved to it the way its elected representatives decide.

Unless, of course, the 14th Amendment is being piddled on.

Here’s hoping this case has the same impact as Heller and McDonald.