{"id":84649,"date":"2023-03-13T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=84649"},"modified":"2023-03-13T13:09:24","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T18:09:24","slug":"priorities-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=84649","title":{"rendered":"Priorities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>SCENE:  It&#8217;s1989, in the home of TONI and MELVIN Carter (JR.).  Melvin is a police officer; Toni an aspiring politician. They sit on a couch in the living room, watching the news.   Their 10 year old son Melvin the III walks into the room. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  Mom?  Dad? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN JR:  Yes, son?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III: What&#8217;s for dinner?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TONI:  We have no food. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  What now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN JR. We bought an acquarium.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  Uh &#8211; cool?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TONI: Absolutely cool.  You know how we love fish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN JR:  We also got the driveway cobblestoned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  But our driveway was perfectly fine&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TONI:  I&#8217;ve always wanted a cobblestoned driveway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:   But&#8230;why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  It&#8217;ll set off the look of the1932 Cord Roadster I bought at the car show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  The what what what? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TONI:  It&#8217;s a classic car.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  I didn&#8217;t know we were &#8220;classic car&#8221; people.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN JR.  We&#8217;re not.  Just seemed like a good idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TONI:  Provided we got a cobblestone driveway.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  But&#8230;dinner?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN JR:  My boss is just going to have to pay me more.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MELVIN III:  Huh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>SCENE dissolves, flashing forward 34 years.  Melvin III is now the mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I\u2019m sorry to hear about this; we really do need to fix these darn roads!<br><br>Luckily, we have a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SalesTax?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SalesTax<\/a> proposal at the legislature right now to do exactly that! Can we count on you to support our bill &amp; help solve this problem for others in the future? Thx! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/mnleg?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#mnleg<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/0cNajaqfzu\">https:\/\/t.co\/0cNajaqfzu<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Melvin Carter (@melvincarter3) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/melvincarter3\/status\/1634200132416684033?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 10, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>MITCH BERG:  So we&#8217;ve got money for student savings accounts, universal basic income, reparations, and trying to build a new Rondo neighborhood on a land bridge over I94&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;but we&#8217;re waiting on the Legislature &#8211; and apparently the minority party in the legislature, at that &#8211; to pay for something that is <em>one of government&#8217;s unambiguously legitimate jobs?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SCENE: It&#8217;s1989, in the home of TONI and MELVIN Carter (JR.). Melvin is a police officer; Toni an aspiring politician. They sit on a couch in the living room, watching the news. Their 10 year old son Melvin the III walks into the room. MELVIN III: Mom? Dad? MELVIN JR: Yes, son? MELVIN III: What&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-st-paul","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84649","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=84649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84650,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84649\/revisions\/84650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}