{"id":25683,"date":"2012-01-19T05:37:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T11:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25683"},"modified":"2014-10-05T14:39:20","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T19:39:20","slug":"and-now-let-us-wallow-in-metaphor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25683","title":{"rendered":"And Now Let Us Wallow In Metaphor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found this quote in yesterday’s Strib <\/em>editorial about Governor Dayton’s bonding bill<\/a> to be oddly revelatory:<\/p>\n

“I learned from my father and my uncles, who were pretty successful job creators in Minnesota, the importance of focusing on downtown. … If you lose the core of the downtown, you lose the vitality of the region.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s talking, of course, about spending bonding money downtown – the same kind of bonding spending (at various levels) that’s helped to bring all sorts of government-blessed downtown-saving ventures as Urban Renewal, the clearing of the Gateway, Riverplace, Saint Anthony Main, Mississippi Live, the Conservatory and Block E to Minneapolis’ core. \u00a0And we all know how those worked, don’t we?<\/p>\n

But there’s a germ of revelation in that quote. \u00a0No, not that Dayton learned anything about business – clearly all business sense in the Dayton family passed on with the Governor’s ancestors.<\/p>\n

But Dayton – and the DFL – learned everything they knew, and know, about the economy at about the same time that the Daytons chain of stores was at its commercial and social peak, in the forties through the early seventies.<\/p>\n

It was a time when…:<\/p>\n