The GOP’s plan to help the economy by, among many other things, dialing back regulation, makes intrinsic sense if you have the faintest sense of how business works.

Most liberals do not.  They think jerbs are created when government submits a funded work order, all too often.

Worse?  When you talk to too many libs about reducing regulation, they say “Hey!  Regulation gives us safe water and clean air!”

To which one is tempted to reply “Yes, and we’re not talking, largely, about those regulations, and would it be possible to have enough government and the right amount of regulations, rather than too much of both?”

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

You thought that because the City approved all your permits, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars to open a business here?

SUCKER!

I followed the link to a PiPress story; one Kevin Vanderaa, owner of a Minneapolis bakery called “Cupcake”, wanted to open another location on Grand Avenue.  He had everything squared away – or so he thought.

We pick up with the PiPress story:

Vanderaa signed a lease in July to open in the former Wonderment Toy Store, between Lexington Parkway and Dale Street. Unlike the Minneapolis Cupcake location, this one was to have a 32-seat wine bar along with a bakery and cafe. At the time, he didn’t know that because he was going to serve beer and wine he would need more parking spaces. The city held up the business license until he could secure a shared parking arrangement or a parking variance for seven spaces required by the Board of Zoning Appeals.

“But people gotta park…!”

Have you been to Grand Avenue lately?

Bear in mind, these are jobs.  Not “infrastructure” jerbs, like the jerbs Governor Dayton is yapping about in his pork-laden bonding bill, temporary jobs that’ll go to Dayton’s union buddies and disappear as soon as the “infrastructure” is built.  Real jobs, that last as long as the business lasts.

The kind of jobs that the DFL extinguishes with gay abandon.

For your own good, of course:

“Everyone wants Cupcake on Grand Avenue,” said McLean Donnelly, vice president of the association. “But there’s a right process of setting up parking with businesses on Grand Avenue, and if the correct process had been in place, we’d be enjoying cupcakes right now.”

Let those unemployed people eat process!

In December, Vanderaa got a signed lease from nearby Anderson Cleaners for the parking spaces. The Zoning Board approved it Dec. 27 with a 10-day period for appeals. Vanderaa said he thought the appeal period began the day it was approved by the board. When 10 days had passed, he began construction. The floor was ripped out and pumping and electrical were started.

But at 5 p.m. Jan. 19, even though the Zoning Board already had given its OK, the Summit Hill Association filed an appeal, citing that Vanderaa should have had a shared parking agreement instead of a lease with Anderson Cleaners. Vanderaa was stunned because he thought the appeal period had passed. Later, he found out it hadn’t actually begun until Jan. 9, when the lease was officially voted on and signed off by the St. Paul City Council. The city then notified Vanderaa that his permit was being pulled.

Did you follow that?

Now, you might say “that’s just a bunch of city regulations” – and you’re right.  But DFL government behaves like liberal government, at all levels; regulations have boomed under Obama, under Dayton, and of course in Saint Paul under 60 years of DFL rule (with a 12 year break under Coleman and, to a lesser extent, Kelly).

Take the problems facing Mr. Vanderaa at “Cupcake”, and apply them to something in the state’s kill zone – say, the Polymet mine project up on the Iron Range.  Like Saint Paul, the Iron Range desperately needs jobs.  Like Saint Paul, there are markets to be filled on the Range; yuppie fans of cupcakes (which, MPR tells me, is the latest pop-culture fad) on Grand, a world hungry for industrial minerals like Polymet will produce).

And on the Range, as in Saint Paul, regulations – controlled, inevitably, by political as well as bureaucratic interests – stymie Polymet with every-bit-as-tight a stranglehold as they do “Cupcake On Grand”.

Donnelly said the information provided to the Board of Zoning was inconsistent and there were several unresolved technical questions the board hadn’t pinned down.

“People think we’re singling out this business,” Donnelly said. “But if Vanderaa gets a parking variance, it can impact other businesses on Grand Avenue. And a variance stays with the property and not ownership. If the parking situation is a mess, we’re stuck with it.”

Look at the bright side; nobody’s building a train down your street.

But the real point is, regulation kills jobs.  And while most of our society accepts some regulation – speed limits, pollution limits in water and air, medical licensure and the like – there’s a thick gray line between “The government and regulation we need” and “Government and regulation that really exists only to give government something to do at best, and serve as the policy manifestation of some special interest or another at worst”.

And that kills jobs faster than any “infrastructure” project can possibly replace them.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, February 6th, 2012 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Progressive Tyranny, Socialism American Style, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.