{"id":890,"date":"2007-06-05T04:49:33","date_gmt":"2007-06-05T10:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/06\/05\/canary-in-the-bull-pasture\/"},"modified":"2007-06-05T04:49:33","modified_gmt":"2007-06-05T10:49:33","slug":"canary-in-the-bull-pasture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=890","title":{"rendered":"Canary In The Bull Pasture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday’s Strib editorial dances about the obvious conclusion<\/a> but, blinded by its extremist statist ideology, couldn’t actually spell it out if it were in five foot flaming letters in their North Oaks living rooms:<\/p>\n

While the central cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have avoided the economic devastation that still besets much of the Midwestern Rust Belt, they have not kept pace with more dynamic cities farther west, places they would like to emulate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Er, says who?<\/p>\n

That picture emerges from a new Brookings Institution report, “Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America’s Older Industrial Cities.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah.\u00a0\u00a0The Brookings\u00a0Institution, the famously left-of-center think tank that never met a tax bill or government intervention it didn’t like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The impression left is of Minnesota’s urban core drifting between two fates — steering away from the vortex that has swallowed Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis and other Midwestern trouble spots, but unable to join the clubby atmosphere of Austin, Tex., Denver, Seattle and other more prosperous places.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And why <\/em>are those other places more prosperous?<\/p>\n

The condition of central cities is important, the report says, because they are the canary in the coal mine; trouble at the core bodes poorly for the suburbs and the state. Indeed, state governments hold the key to the success of older big cities, the report says, because their policies set the table for older cities to compete.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can lead a horse to water, goes the old saying, but you can’t wrench the horse from the control of a bunch of\u00a0sixties’-vintage paleoliberal neo-socialists whose agendas consider drinking water to be a racist, sexist\u00a0diversion from imposing a narrow, ideologically-blinkered\u00a0version of “horseness” onto it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But let’s look at the specific priorities that the Strib calls for:<\/p>\n

\u00a0State investments in education, jobs, public safety, transit, housing and urban amenities create cities that are stronger, regions that grow more efficiently and local economies that are “a boon to, rather than a drain on, state budgets.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet doesn’t the Strib call out Austin, Texas<\/a> – a city larger than Minneapolis, and when combined with San Antonio part of a metro area comparable with the Twin Cities – as an example?<\/p>\n

And isn’t mentioning “Texas” a cue for smug lefties to start tittering about the state’s education budget?<\/p>\n

Austin has a smaller, less-expensive transit system than the Twin Cities; I can see no references to anyone building trains (which, if you ask a Twin Cities lefty, is the one thing that will one day separate Minneapolis from Omaha).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Public safety?\u00a0 Each of the cities the Strib cites has had a “shall issue” concealed carry law for vastly longer than Minnesota; Texas has a reputation for no-BS law and order that is pretty much the mirror image of Minnesota’s criminal-coddling welfare magnet.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that’s a message Gov. Tim Pawlenty ignored in vetoing a tax bill that would have restored a portion of the deep cuts in aid to cities that he initiated in 2003… As Brookings’ Bruce Katz said in a recent speech: City-based regions are the “main organizing units” of global competition; competing successfully and meeting the great environmental and social challenges of our time “rests largely on the health and vitality and prosperity of major cities and metropolitan areas.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then the Twin Cities – locked into an ideology of spending without accountability and want without goal by uber-liberal administrations whose only goal seems to be to garner more money and power unto themselves – are pretty well doomed, huh?<\/p>\n

To that end, it’s in a state’s best interest, says the report, to ensure that its biggest cities are safe and fiscally healthy; that their physical landscapes are transformed, and that their middle and upper-middle classes grow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what’s the best way for that <\/em>to happen?<\/p>\n

To keep using the inner cities as warehouses for the poor, in a “war on poverty” that is the nation’s real quagmire?<\/p>\n

To keep entrusting our cities to liberal administrations who see “lack of diversity” as a bigger problem than crime?<\/p>\n

Oh, and since the Strib is sounding the warning gong, just how bad are <\/em>things?<\/p>\n

It’s good that Minneapolis and St. Paul are not on the Brookings “critical list” — at least not yet. But it would be nice to see them moving toward the top tier. Among central cities in the 50 largest metro areas, Minneapolis ranked 16th in economic condition and ninth in residential well-being. St. Paul ranked 30th in economic condition and 15th in residential well-being. While both cities run ahead of their Rust Belt neighbors in the rankings, they trail Austin, Seattle, Denver and a half-dozen other “peers.” That puts the central Twin Cities in a category that might be labeled “pretty good.” In an era of sharp competition, pretty good isn’t good enough.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

WHAT?<\/p>\n

Forget for a moment that the report, by a left-leaning think tank, is measuring spending; we come in closer to the top of the list than the middle<\/em>, and the Strib is fussing?<\/p>\n

Leaving aside that\u00a0when the comparison is based entirely on the amount of higher-government spending, “pretty good” isn’t very good at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday’s Strib editorial dances about the obvious conclusion but, blinded by its extremist statist ideology, couldn’t actually spell it out if it were in five foot flaming letters in their North Oaks living rooms: While the central cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have avoided the economic devastation that still besets much of the Midwestern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,17,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-minneapolis","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","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=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}