Businesses along University Avenue – the ones lucky enough to survive the light rail construction process – are getting tax notices for “streetscape improvements“.

[Insurance salesman and Uni avenue businessman Doug] Nguyen was surprised to discover Thursday that he’s being assessed $3,200 by the city of St. Paul for light-rail related street work — “above-standard lighting” and “streetscape improvements” — in front of 1539 W. University Ave…Nguyen said he already pays roughly $15,000 a year in property taxes for his business, and there are still two road work signs on his block, including one directly outside his window.

 And after four months, how are all those new-urbaneriffic benefits shaking out?

 “I don’t see any benefit from the light rail as far as my business at all,” he said. “There will be exposure (to customers), but I don’t think it’s a $3,000 benefit.”

 

He’s been selling insurance out of his State Farm office for more than a decade, and he and his son Alex Nguyen plan to appeal the assessment…”Light rail has been good in some ways,” said [Alex], who works out of his father’s State Farm office. “The road looks nicer — I’ll say that — but they took away all the parking. We lost the front spaces.”

 Less parking, no real tangible business benefit…

…and a big bill.  And it’s a big bill for everyone:

Many businesses with 40 feet of street frontage will be charged $1,710, while properties with more linear frontage such as car dealerships and professional buildings can expect assessments of $10,000 or more.

 

The owners of Spruce Tree Centre at Snelling and University avenues will foot a bill for $15,600 as a result of having 364 feet of frontage. The block-length Marsden Building at 1717 W. University Ave. is being assessed $29,600 for 691 feet of street frontage.

 

Jack McCann discovered that his Midtown Commons office property on the 2300 block of West University Avenue will be assessed $17,900.

And how many of these businesses, like the Nguyen’s, will benefit not an iota from the light rail? 

Indeed, how many are more than a block or two from the train’s stations, and are tradiing less parking for…absolutely no foot traffic?  And that’s assuming “foot traffic” is part of their business, which for Marsden – a company that provides janitors and building security – it’s not?

Everyone having fun yet?

The lefty media has been giggling like schoolgirls over this story – a Texas waitress, who got not one but two $2000 tips from Rush Limbaugh – and gave the money to a pro-infanticide group:

“That was like blood money to me,’ Tierce told The Dallas Morning News.

Tierce was the former executive director at the Texas Equal Access Fund, which provides money to women who can’t afford to get abortions.

She was the “executive director” of a nonprofit that provided infanticide to poor women, AND a waitress?

Anyway…;

Tierce said it felt right to her to give the money to the TEA Fund.

‘It felt like laundering the money in a good way,’ she told the newspaper.

‘He’s such an obvious target for any feminist or sane person.

Yeah, Ms. Tierce seems pretty sane to me.

The part that I get the chuckle over? Ms. Tierce, and the media bobbleheads who’ve been reporting the story, keep saying that Ms. Tierce “gave Limbaugh’s money” to the infanticide charity.

No!

When Limbaugh left the tip – of his own free will, mind you, not as part of some “living wage” wealth transfer – it became her money.

She gave her own money to her own group.

This story isn’t “Man bites dog”. It isn’t even “dog sniffs dog”. It’s “Deeply morally ugly woman gives her own money to a group she used to run, while taking a snotty, stupid swipe at someone who has the temerity to “share the wealth” of his own free will, rather than at government gunpoint”.

And now, from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, comes this radical news; law-enforcement officers’ qualified immunity doesn’t allow them to act like storm troopers just because they feel like it.

Today is “One Hit Wonder” day.

I thought I’d honor a few that don’t get nearly enough attention – and maybe, just maybe, should have been multi-hit wonders.

Did Donnie Iris ever have another hit after “Ah Leah?”

Not sure he needed to:

Canada’s Honeymoon Suite was one of a thousand five-piece pop-rock bands from the eighties – Loverboy, Glass Tiger, Survivor, Scandal, Limited Warranty, and on and on.

But “New Girl Now” from 1984 was freaking cool song:

(And yeah, I know – “Feel It Again” hit the top forty too. But barely. I mean, come on).

Speaking of Canadian bands – let’s not forget The Kings (and one of the most atrocious reconstructed videos, for one of the coolest one hit wonders ever…)

Some German wave-pop? 1982’s “Major Tom” by Peter Schilling counts:

Opposite extreme? One I didn’t expect to find – this live version of Little Steven (aka Miami Steve, aka Silvio Dante) and the Disciples of Soul’s “Forever”, which grazed the top forty for a week in 1982:

That should do for this year…

The Star/Tribune is covering what appears to be an escalating war between a number of Minneapolis street gangs.  Yesterday’s piece, bylined Libor Jany, breaks things down…

…well, almost.  I’ll add emphasis:

The three people shot Tuesday were believed to have had some involvement in the Soundbar shooting, community leaders said.

But those were only the most recent.

Others include:

• Eulalio Gonzalez-Sanchez, 36, of Minneapolis, was gunned down about 6:25 a.m. Sunday at the corner of 22nd Avenue NE. and 7th Street as he walked home from the bus stop. No one has been arrested in the case.

• Earl Lee Malone, 18, of Edina, was fatally shot and left in front of a house on the 2600 block of Knox Avenue about 11 p.m. Saturday. Police later arrested a 21-year-old man in connection with the shooting, but it’s unclear when charges will be brought.

• Jemario Langston, 17, of Minneapolis, was shot and killed Sept. 16 by assailants who chased him to his aunt’s house. After hearing gunshots, the aunt opened her back door to find his sprawled body. No one has been arrested.

The Bogus Boys have been locked in a long-simmering struggle with several other South Side gangs, including the Bloods, “10s” and “20s,” said Ferome Brown, an activist who attended Tuesday’s meeting and works to steer young people away from gangs.

Many of the gang members he works with, Brown says, grew up in the same neighborhoods.

That’s a good run-down of a neighborhood in crisis…

…but wait.  See the empasized stuff?  Earl Malone?   We talked about him earlier today.   He was shot in self-defense.   The media knows this – as in this WCCO-TV piece filed a day earlier than the Strib’s piece.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the carjacking that Mr. Malone apparently attempted may have been gang-related.   

But lumping a self-defense shooting – one in which a community member defended themselves against an immediate threat to their life and health – is not the same as gang bangers carrying on an endless blood feud.  It’s just not.

Does the Strib know the difference?

Holder resigns as AG. 

Now – how about some subpoenas?

The rumors started flying over the weekend – and Tuesday, we got confirmation:  one of the rash of shootings in Minneapolis over the weekend involved a carry permittee, a 21 year old Minneapolis man:

Authorities believe he was acting in self-defense when he fatally shot 18-year-old Earl Malone Saturday night at the intersection of Knox Avenue North and 26th Street.

Police took the 21-year-old man into custody at the scene. Sources tell WCCO the man has a conceal-and-carry [sic] permit, and told police he shot Malone because he had tried to rob him.

According to a Facebook post from the Twin Cities Gun Owners and Carry Forum and the irreplaceable Shelley Leeson – a reliable source on these sorts of stories – the permit holder apparently said Malone was armed, and tried to car-jack him. 

According to police files, the 21-year-old permittee fired three shots; Malone fled, and the permittee called 911, exactly as one is supposed to do.  Squads responding found Malone dead – his gun still in his hand. 

Since the permittee has been released without charges, you may be certain of three things:

1. He didn’t pick a fight with Mr. Malone.  Indeed, he did everything feasible to get away from the fight (with “feasible” being the operative word).
2. The permittee legitimately feared being killed or maimed – enough so that the notoriously anti-gun Henco attorney Mike Freeman was convinced the case didn’t need to go to trial.
3. The use of lethal force was appropriate under the circumstances; if it weren’t, Mike Freeman would pounce like a vulture.

And while the identity of the shooter has not been released, and likely won’t be (for the shooter’s protection, no doubt), I’m going to hazard a guess – and it is only a guess – that the permittee is African-American. 

If it weren’t true, the local media and the cluster of anti-gun pressure groups, who would love to have a Trayvon Martin of their very own to wave like a bloody shirt, would be howling about it right now.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Want to make a fortune selling your service? Get invited to the next conference of County Managers or City Managers.

Just sat through a mandatory half-hour meeting “on re-branding.” It’s the latest bandwagon for local governments. There’s even a handbook.

Ramsey County is changing its logo. The County Board already spent $100,000 on design consultants and just hired a Communications Director to help implement the re-brand.

Instead of this:

We’ll have this:

You notice we got a lot of bang for our $100,000 bucks. The font is new and a soft grey. The entity name is all caps, with the subsidiary office below in contrasting color. And the color has changed: we’re going to a less alarming color of red. Burgundy and Grey, very 80’s.

Not right away, of course. We’ll use up existing stocks of business cards and letterhead. Public works trucks will change logos as they are replaced. The signs outside our buildings probably will last a decade or longer. It’s a “iterative rebranding,” not a radical abrupt change.

Having different brands now is confusing to the public, which is why we must rebrand. But rather than spend a ton of money to clear up the confusion, we’ll leave the confusing brands in place to leave the public confused as we gradually switch over to the new brand, to make things less confusing.

As a mid-level bureaucrat, I don’t order letterhead, buy business cards or paint signs; I use what management gives me. What I want to know is: how do I code that half-hour meeting on my Time and Productivity Report? “Complete Waste” does not appear to be an option.

Joe Doakes

CD8 DFL representative Rick Nolan was photographed on “hunting trip” photo op, carrying an eeeevil black assault rifle AR-15.

Anyone see the problem?

Answer below the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Outrage is brewing over the scandal involving “Community Action”, a Minneapolis “non-profit” whose director, Bill Davis, spent a boatload of taxpayer money on living the high life, according to an audit. 

And yep, DFL figures are involved in the scandals up to their eyeballs:

[5th CD Representative and DFLer Keith] Ellison, [Senate Deputy Majority Leader Jeff] Hayden, [Minneapolis City Council president and DFLer Barbara] Johnson and City Council Member Robert Lilligren were on the board during the time covered by the audit. All have said they appointed alternates and did not regularly attend meetings.

Passing the buck to your patsy.  Not exactly a profile in courage…

…or, I suspect, much of a defense. 

The GOP has filed an ethics complaint against Hayden, and Ellison’s GOP challenger Doug Daggett has got Ellison pretty well dialed in.

But here’s the real scandal;  this is inevitable in a one-party city like Minneapolis. 

Maintaining one-party control in a place like Minneapolis (or Saint Paul, which has its own single-party patronage scandal brewing) requires paying off a lot of stakeholders from the dominant political class – in both the Twin Cities’ cases, that’s the DFL.

There are only so many patronage jobs available for the giving out in city government.  Likewise, the city school district can only absorb so many petty administrators and pay for so many “consultants”.

So the “non-profit sector” serves as a patronage factory for people in the dominant political class.  While many non-profits exist to do good things, many others exist to channel money from the government run by the party in power to the people who help get and keep it elected.

Picking examples of corruption in a one-party city like Minneapolis – like its intellectual kin in Detroit, Camden, New Orleans, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC and so many more – is like playing whack-a-mole.  Until the people of Minneapolis decide they need the accountability that a multi-party government can (with a little elbow grease) bring, not to mention an adversarial (as opposed to dutiful) media? 

Meet the new scandal, same as the old scandal.  And the next scandal.

Why does the DFL hate the First Amendment?

Trackers – interns for various campaigns and groups filming footage of politicians giving speeches and doing other public appearances – have been a fixture of Minnesota political life for at least a decade now. Most politicians – and by “most” I mean “everyone I’ve encountered, from every party, so far” – accepts that with good grace, and tries not to say something stupid.

Apparently “good grace” is beyond DFL Rep. Paul Rosethal, from District 49B in Edina:

“You’re in the Edina City Hall. You’re not allowed to be here without their permission to film. So I’d appreciate your leaving,” Rosenthal said in an exchange posted on YouTube.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s a public building” replied [photographer Ethan] Hellier.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” said Rosenthal, moving in front of the camera.

Clever, Mr. Rosenthal.

At least, compared to representative Ron Erhardt, from District 498, who seems to be going more and more Tony Soprano as he gets older (With emphasis gleefully added):

Rep. Ron Erhardt, a Democrat, took a different approach.
“Do you know what would happen to that thing if we dropped it? Probably wouldn’t work very well. Now would you back off please?” Erhardt said.

At least he isn’t threatening to blow Mr. Helier’s head off.

Dear Edina – these are the thugs you sent to StPaul in 2012. Let’s shoot for better this time, okay?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Obama has adopted the Bush Doctrine.

I think it’s more a matter of him reverting to form for Democrats. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton broke with the 20th century Democrat tradition of getting the US involved in wars overseas.
Obama has dived back into that trough, whole hog.

The Minnesota Association of Health Underwriters is worried about MNSure – for the same reason Preferres One bailed:

[MAHU chair Alycia] Riedly says there is no computerized renewal system in place, and if it is not functional by the next MNsure open enrollment, Nov. 15, it could affect tens of thousands of people who are already enrolled through MNsure.
Riedl says it will severely limit their access to information if they want to change their policies in any way and could create lengthy delays for MNsure consumers.
“The renewals would literally have to be done by hand, and that will take a long time, creating a backlog that hurts consumers who want to make better choices, and it will hurt MNsure’s bottom line if it isn’t taken care of soon,” Riedl said.

The private sector systems that MNSure bullied into submission have been doing this successfully since, well, health insurance existed.
So by all means, Twin Cities media – let’s talk about hanky-panky in vacant houses and crazy people chopping up garages.
This is serious business. Therefore, the DFL wants to focus on silly.
And so we will get a lot of silly between now and November.

 As was noted last week, there’ve been two arrests in the first armed robbery in the 150-odd year history of the Minnesota State Fair. 

Two Saint Paul men were arrested in the August 29 robbery of the MN Craft Beer booth, which netted (at least briefly) over $100,000. 

St. Paul residents Antontio Washington, 20, and Jarret Maiden, 35, have been booked into jail in suspicion of being behind the $10,000-plus heist, which was the first armed robbery in the fair’s history.

But there’s a mystery!

As was noted on this blog during the fair, the Minnesota State Fairgrounds was posted, for the first time since “shall issue” carry reform passed in 2003, as a gun-free zone.

And yet…:

State Fair police spokesperson Brooke Blakey tells us the gun believed to have been used during the robbery has been recovered, but declined further comment, citing the active investigation.

So there’s a mystery worthy of Poireau or Holmes.  Two, really:

• How did an illegal gun make it past the signs at the front gate?
• How did a gun wind up getting used in a crime where guns had just been made illegal?

Someone explain this to me?

My first radio job, at KEYJ in Jamestown, North Dakota, started 35 years ago this past month or so.  After months – like, a year – of hanging around the station bothering the staff and trying to figure out how everything worked, the owner, Bob Richardson, decided to give me a job.  I spent most of August training – which involved coming in to the studio at 5AM Saturday mornings with John Weisphenning and Dick Ingstand, learning how to run the board and the transmitter and spin records and read news. 

It all led up to my first day “soloing” – September 1.  I got up at 4:30, got to the station at 4:45, warmed up the transmitter, picked through the 50 feet of wire copy that had printed out of the AP teletype, organized my newscasts, and got things ready go to.   At 5:55AM, I turned on the mike, read the signon script, played the national anthem, and the day got started for real.  

There were one-hour news blocks at 7, 8 – each with long blocks of national, statewide and local news, weathercasts, sports news focusing on local and North Dakota teams (the NDSU Bison, then as now, dominated all they surveyed), reports from the nursing homes, the city and rural fire departments, a run through the weeks’ arrest reports, and more.  At 10AM, “Trading Post” – a 30 minute show where listeners bought, sold and traded things.  And in between, music – punctuated by five minutes of network news at the top of the hour, and five minutes of local news, weather and sports at the bottom, with weather forecasts at :15 and :45 after the hour.  And then another hour of news, weather, sports and local flava at noon.

Once I got past 1PM, it was downhill; just music and the weather and the bottom of the hour news.  You could breathe a little. 

I was on from 5AM til 3PM.  It was a long, tiring day.  And I loved it.

And I did it again for the next couple weeks. 

The 22nd started out routinely enough; I was still a little rough, but getting the hang of things fast.  That was one nice thing about those loooong board shifts with all that news; you got a ton of  practice, fast. 

Around 1:30, Bob Richardson, the owner, called from his lake cabin.  The guy who was supposed to work from 3 until the midnight sign-off was very, very sick, and nobody else was available – Richardson would have done it, I suspect, had he been in town – and would I mind working the evening shift too? 

I asked if someone could fill in for a couple hours so I could grab some food and a shower.  He rounded up the weekday evening guy to come in for a couple hours; I biked home, ate, showered, and came back and worked until midnight – which was mostly just spinning music and reading the news at the bottom of the hour and, at about 11:55, reading the “signoff” script, playing George Beverly Shea’s “Our Father”, and signing off the station. 

I biked home through a gorgeous, pleasant North Dakota night – the bugs weren’t swarming around the street lights, so it was a good night – and went to bed, exhausted. 

I think it was 7AM when my dad woke me up; I had a phone call. 

It was Richardson; the guy who was supposed to be on Saturday Night was also supposed to be on Sunday; he was still sick, and he still couldn’t find another substitute.  Could I do it?  And, by the way, sign the station on real quick?  (We normally signed on at 7:30 on Sundays, and went off the air at 10PM). 

And so I biked back to the station, signed on (on time!); the schedule was lighter (no hour-long news blocks, and lots of church services and recorded religious shows)…

…but it was another long day. 

I got off the air at 3 – for real, this time – and walked home, counting up the numbers; 24 hours in one weekend, times my pay rate ($2.90/hour) – I made damn near seventy bucks!

That put a little spring in my step.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I haven’t seen much from St. Paul’s Poet Laureate For Life, Carol Connolly, appointed by Mayor Chris Coleman. Her first poem immortalized his 2006 Budget. A later work celebrated his 2010 reelection.
I was hoping she’d write about President Obama’s 2014 decision to send advisors to Iraq, not to serve as combat troops, but to forward deploy with Iraqi troops giving tactical advice and calling in airstrikes, coming, as it does, after his 2012 decision to remove American troops from Iraq.
I thought she might title the piece “You put your best boots in, you pull your best boots out, you put your best boots in . . . .”
Joe Doakes

Saint Paul. It’s like a parody, only it’s not.

… It was an “undocumented visitor”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“End of life” is another way of saying “death.”
Here’s a Panel wanting to reform medical care for dying people.
It’s a Death Panel.
She called it, years ago. Credit where due . . .
Joe Doakes

Some of us were saying so at the time.

Jeff Johnson for Governor.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show –  will be on from 1-3PM!

I’ll be talking with:

• GOP Gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson, about the ongoing MNSure debacle.

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!

Here’s a blast from the past:  Keith Ellison, in an interview on KFAI (a little community station that serves as the drum-pounding id of the loony liberal West Bank, and for which I was a news guy for a while in the early ’90s) exhibits that reach-across-the-aisle comity that Lori Sturdevant is always demanding (from Republicans), repeatedly calls MNGOP Deputy Chair (at the time, Secretary) Chris Fields a…

…well, let’s take a look (with some emphasis added):

Ellison: “You’re real stupid for bringing up your domestic violence allegations. I wasn’t gonna say a thing about it. I wasn’t gonna mention it.”

Fields: “You know, if you want to talk about divorce —”

Ellison: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Fields: “—talk about your own. Talk about the fact—”

Ellison: “You are a scumbag.”

Fields: “—that you only pay $500 for child support. Talk about that. You used that money to hurt my ex-wife, who I still love.”

Ellison: “You are a low-life scumbag. You are a low-life scumbag.”

Fields: “I did not spend money to look into my divorce. You did.”

Ellison: “You are a gutter-dweller, and you’re an idiot for bringing up your domestic violence charges.”

Fields: “There was never any.”

This is the DFL in action.

Hear the whole thing here.  And if you live in CD5, bring a friend to vote for Doug Daggett.

CORRECTION:  I thought it seemed familiar.  The story is two years old.  Blah.  I think I may have even written about it back then – to try to get people to vote for Chris Fields, who was running against the peevish Ellison back then.

The story is old.  The sentiment – get rid of Ellison – is timeless.

To:  The Blue States
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Examples

Hey, Blues,

Scotland has voted to stay in the United Kingdom (provided the UK’s taxpayers pay more for its care and feeding).

But perhaps there’s a lesson in there for you.

Given your contempt for those who think differently than you – “What’s the Matter With Kansas“, anyone? – and the conceit you cling to that you pay the nation’s freight (it’s BS, but it’s Krugman, so you all are attached to it), perhaps it’s time for you to follow the Scots’ example.

Maybe you should get high on dudgeon, and take your toys and go elsewhere?

That’ll show us!

Sincerely,

That is all!

Deb Wasserman Drescher Schultz will likely not be The Nanny the chair of the DNC too terribly much longer.

And it’s interesting to notice, after two years of “War on Women” rhetoric (much of it put into the public arena by Wasserman Drescher Schultz herself), that the Democrats’ bench of (obligatory) female prospects to run the DNC is so very very shallow:

Here’s the reality: No matter the outcome for Democrats in November, Wasserman Schultz will likely be shown the door, with another woman to replace her. But, the list of possible replacements is a not-so-long list of two: Stephanie Schriock, who heads the Democratic women’s group EMILY’s List, and Stephanie Rawlings Blake, the mayor of Baltimore.

The world of politics still has a recruiting problem when it comes to women, and Wasserman Schultz is perhaps both a beneficiary and victim of that reality.

Looks like a certain party needs to start putting together binders and binders full of women…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Got to the office Monday, arms and back were sore from a weekend Honey-Do project. No pain pills at the office.
I had bottles of ibuprofen and acetaminophen in my desk drawer, but new office assistant (21-year old woman) re-organized. The bottles had expiration dates of 2011 and 2012 so she threw them away. She didn’t want me to poison myself with expired medication.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that acetaminophen and ibuprofen do not expire. She means well, she just doesn’t know any better.
She’s a perfect Democrat: she causes others to suffer pain but since she was acting with good intentions and didn’t mean to cause harm, she can’t be blamed for it.
Joe Doakes

True enough.

Although she won’t be a true democrat until she actively demonizes you for seeking a solution she disagreed with…

Governor Dayton says “the buck stops” with him in re MNSure:

— Gov. Mark Dayton [said] that he ultimately feels responsible for the success or failure of [MNSure].

Dayton apologized for problems Minnesotans are having on the state’s health care exchange. The governor is promising to fix multiple website problems, as soon as possible.

“I apologize to those Minnesotans who have been seriously inconvenienced or are distraught by the failures of MNsure. It’s unacceptable,” Dayton said Thursday.“Did I cause? I don’t think I caused the problems at MNsure and I did everything I could to prevent them,” he said. “Ultimately the buck stops here.”

Oh, yeah – you read that right; the story came out last December. 

Before MNSure’s current woes – the cratering of the code, and Preferred One’s bailing out of the whole debacle. 

So – when Governor Dayton says “the buck stops here”, does he mean it like he did…:

• during the Vikings Stadium fiasco, where he committed the state’s taxpayers to hundreds of millions of dollars, then told the Legislature to “deal with it”, a la Michael Scott?
• during the Minimum Wage fiasco, when signed a deeply flawed bill, and then publicly wavered a few months later when his spawn told him they were having trouble making ends meet at their posh Minneapolis restaurant?
• during the last Budget session, when he served as an untrained mouthpiece for the public employee unions that put him in power?

Because none of those, nor his behavior in re MNSure, involve actually stopping any bucks.