{"id":5553,"date":"2009-10-14T12:03:43","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T17:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5553"},"modified":"2009-10-14T11:56:42","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T16:56:42","slug":"radio-free-saint-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5553","title":{"rendered":"Radio Free Saint Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saint Paul is a one-party town.\u00a0 There is no more political diversity in Saint Paul government that there was in Ceaucescu’s Romania (although the Saint Paul DFL isn’t quite <\/em>that bad.\u00a0 Yet.\u00a0 I’m kidding, of course.\u00a0 I’m a kidder.\u00a0 I kid).<\/p>\n

Whatever your political beliefs – even if you’re a principled liberal, for that matter – a functioning multi-party system is essential if you want to ensure some sort of accountability, to say nothing of vigorous debate, in government (if you’re an unprincpled liberal, of course, you want <\/em>Saint Paul to be a little Chicago.\u00a0 But then, I’m not writing to you, if that’s what you are).\u00a0 Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as they say – and the Saint Paul DFL has absolute power.\u00a0 Even if you are <\/em>a DFLer, you have to realize that can’t end well.<\/p>\n

Anyway – the Saint Paul Mayor’s race is the single biggest race in the state in 2009.\u00a0 And the Saint Paul School Board race is a battle for “control” – and by control, I mean “complete, unfettered” – of the state’s second largest school district; Tom Conlon, the board’s only Republican and, as it happens, the only elected Republican official anywhere in any governmental body in Saint Paul, resigned to move out of state over the past winter.\u00a0 Every single elected official in Saint Paul is a DFLer.<\/p>\n

And it shows.\u00a0 Saint Paul’s property taxes are up over 40% since Chris Coleman took office; services, I assure you, are not.\u00a0 Either is crime – but after years of being one of America’s safest major cities, crime in Saint Paul is on the upswing even as it declines in Minneapolis.\u00a0 There are entire office towers downtown that could collapse, and nobody would notice, because virtually nobody works there.\u00a0 There are probably 4,000 vacant houses in the city, and property values are falling faster than Lorenzo Lamas’s career bell-curve, and neither shows any sign of slowing, much less reversing.<\/p>\n

And the school system is a shambles.\u00a0 After a decade of playing the “Celebrity Superintendant” game, and spending like they had their own currency press, the Saint Paul schools’ graduation rate is almost as low as the tax increases are high; around half of our students graduate; shameful as that is, the rate is much, much lower among minorities.<\/p>\n

So I want you all – even if you don’t live in Saint Paul – to tune on Saturday.\u00a0 Because we have an opportunity here.<\/p>\n

It sometimes feels like being a Republican in Saint Paul is like being a Spartan at Thermopylae (“Our tax hikes shall blot out the sun!”\u00a0 “Then we shall protest in the shade!”) – but there are <\/em>quite a few of us out there.\u00a0 Anywhere from 28% to 40% of the city votes Republican in Presidential and Congressional elections, when the turnout (largely among government union workers who can’t even read the “R” word, and bobbleheaded college kids whose only reflex on encountering cognitive dissonance is to “hiss” like a pearl-clutching Victorian) is huge.<\/p>\n

But as the party showed us in Highland Park two years ago, if every <\/em>Republican turns out, and makes sure <\/em>every Republican turns out, we can shock the world <\/strike>city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So please tune in.\u00a0 We’ll be talking with Mayoral candidate Eva Ng, as well as school board candidates Pat Igo, John Krenik and Chris Conner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And we’ll be talking about how each of you, no matter where you live, <\/em>in or <\/em>out of Saint Paul, can help push this thing over the top.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saint Paul needs your help.\u00a0 We’ll show you how.<\/p>\n

This will be on Saturday, from 1-3PM, on Volume 2 of the Northern Alliance Radio Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saint Paul is a one-party town.\u00a0 There is no more political diversity in Saint Paul government that there was in Ceaucescu’s Romania (although the Saint Paul DFL isn’t quite that bad.\u00a0 Yet.\u00a0 I’m kidding, of course.\u00a0 I’m a kidder.\u00a0 I kid). Whatever your political beliefs – even if you’re a principled liberal, for that matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narn","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}