Speed Gibson

I am finally finding some time to take advantage of the podcasts of "Race to the Right" to hear Marty Andrade and Tony Garcia as they continue their radio adventure on St. Cloud radio.

I'll have more to say after listening to a few weeks' worth as I catch up. I've heard enough to say they're noticeably smoother and I like several of the topics they chose.

About the only negative is that the podcasts are 128kb MP-3 files, which is practically CD quality, and therefore eats a lot of room on my MP3 player. Prager uses 64kb (FM quality), and most use 32kb (AM quality) or less.

I finally caught up with At Issue from Sunday, finishing up with Ember Reichgott-Junge and David Strom. When Ember went prattling on about the great 400-3 House vote as a win for Democrats and that President Bush would have to compromise soon by pulling some troops out as a result, I was doing a Lawrence ("Creepy liar!") O'Donnell. I do not know how David could stay so calm. (Dave Thompson also.)

But he did, noting that the compromise between winning and losing is ... losing.

I sent KSTP an email today, asking that they find better opposition for Mssrs. Strom and Thompson.

Hennepin County Commissioner and author of the Hennepin County Twins Ballpark proposal Mike Opat and fellow Commissioner Randy Johnson pleaded for a Special Session in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was so misleading that it shouldn't have been printed.

First, it blames Governor Tim Pawlenty throughout the piece. I can and have blamed him for a number of poor decisions and broken promises, but here he is largely innocent by not calling a special session. He has, however, sent out a number of feelers, but the Legislature, still smarting from the shutdown and sensing strong public opposition is just not interested. But Pawlenty just isn't trying hard enough:

There has been a lot of talk about the need to put up the votes. We know that Pawlenty, as the former House majority leader, understands how to court and count votes to get his priorities enacted. It is time for him to pick up the phone and make those calls.

And promise them what in return? Apparently your phone calls weren't enough, for lack of a sufficient quid pro quo perhaps.

Second, Opat and Johnson commit a lie of omission, not stating what the actual legislative vote is about. It is not to approve the Twins Stadium proposal per se. It is to remove the check and balance of current State law requiring a referendum to approve the proposed sales tax increase for Hennepin County. A 4-3 vote of the County Board will decide whether to spend additional hundreds of millions of dollars.

Do they know better, i.e., know better what to do than the general public? Quite the reverse, I'd say, given the experience of other cities, and given the great success of the Smoking Ban.

This plea is the final desparation. Either pass the plan or take the blame, Governor. No, the truth is Mr. Opat, you submitted a fatally flawed plan. This is your failure, Kronsteen.

American Thinker is rapidly becoming my favorite read of the day. Bad Tippers and Bitter Waitresses cites a number of wealthy celebrities who tipped well short of expectations.

Michael Moore 3.9%
Barbra Streisand 2.2%
Jesse Jackson 9.6%
John Kerry 1.8%
Al Gore 8.8%
Sean Penn 0.0%

The average ticket was about $450. The average tip was 3.2%.

I wish I could say I was surprised. Remember Al & Tipper Gore's 1997 tax return, showing $353 in charitable contributions out of an adjusted gross income of nearly $200,000?

I wonder how many asked for separate checks.

Hugh Hewitt has quietly switched theme songs, dropping Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country" for Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue". Hugh also sounds a little more intense, and even more locked in with the White House. The foul smell of a radio consultant is in the air.

I'll agree that Canned Heat was a bit dated, but it was still one of the best theme and opening sequences on radio. As you flip the dial or scan the presets around show time, you know instantly when you've found The Hugh Hewitt Show.

But not only is Toby Keith's song a bit over the top, the edit and resulting opening sequence is chaotic and muddled. It's the wrong use for the wrong song, taking our beloved Commissioner from first to worst in this area.

Dennis Prager changed themes sometime after 9/11, using the battle theme from "Gladiator" to characterize this clash of civilizations we now face. It was the right song, and fit the overall theme of the Dennis Prager Show well. The old Handel Concerto theme is a distant memory.

We don't always get it right the first time; remember the Miers nomination? Hugh, you knucklehead, try again!

North Metro is the place for us
Big business without the fuss
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep downtown, just give me that countryside.


Downtown is where I'd rather work
Cor'prate citizenship you should not shirk
I just adore the restaurant scene
The 'Burbs have bistros but downtown has cuisine


The roads!

The Codes!

Fresh air!

The Mayor!


I am the Chair!

Goodbye, Oceanaire!

North Metro here we come!

Today's Star Tribune Editorial entitled Target's move should alarm downtown is pretty much correct despite a couple of convenient misconceptions. It may even be an understatement of the situation.

The news last week that Target Corp. will add thousands of corporate jobs at its north suburban campus was a severe blow to downtown Minneapolis, which had expected to land many of those jobs. It was a harsh reminder, too, of how clearly the deck is stacked against central cities, and a warning to Mayor R.T. Rybak that poking a giant with a stick can bring consequences.

Exactly correct. Pray tell though, who's stacking that deck?

None of that is good for the city or the metro region. Yes, it's good for Brooklyn Park, where land is cheap and tax incentives flow, that Target can develop a $2 billion "new city" with 15,000 jobs plus shops, hotels and a central park. But the project will exacerbate sprawl, worsen traffic and diminish job opportunities for the people who need them most.

However cheap, the point is that the land is available. Downtown, the only place to go is up, and the Rybak administration wouldn't even permit that as the editorial notes. As for tax incentives, whatever amount Target gets will be chump change compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars in external subsidies Minneapolis receives in fiscal disparity and local government aid (LGA).

But how will this exacerbate sprawl? The site is within 15 miles of downtown Minneapolis, well inside the current extent of the "sprawl" many miles beyond. If anything, this is "sprawl" that didn't happen, staying fairly close to the core cities.

Worsen traffic? How? The site is fairly isolated due to Brooklyn Park's "smart growth" planning limiting development north of 85th Avenue until fairly recently. It has pseudo-freeway access from U.S. 169 and Minnesota 610 which will eventually link to Interstate 94. Reworking the "Devil's Triangle" of 85th Avenue, Country Road 81, and U.S. 169 will further improve the situation. The site can handle it now, and it will get better. But put those 15,000 jobs and related parking places in a downtown that still just doesn't "get" parking and see what happens.

The editorial says this will "diminish job opportunities for the people who need them most." I can only guess that this is some reference to the urban poor. Regardless, the demographics of Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park are not all that different. Don't they deserve job opportunities, too? Besides, it's an easy drive, against the rush hour flow, and the existing bus service should expand as Target expands. If Brooklyn Park residents can be expected to commute to downtown Minneapolis, certainly the reverse is true.

The best cities don't wait for a crisis, but act while still on the upswing. Target's tilt to the north and Southdale's challenge from the south should launch not only a comprehensive rethinking of downtown, but a redoing.

The strategy should be obvious. Stop doing what you're doing, like over-regulation, over-taxing, and over-zoning. Repealing the smoking ban (with Hennepin County's co-operation) would be a good first step. Start doing what you're not, like education and policing. Offering educational vouchers to escape the worst public school system in the state would show that Minneapolis is serious about its problems. So would restoring the police ranks to their former levels and not tying them up with endless citizen review boards. Providing a greener street for a pan-handling high school drop-out to accost you solves nothing.

In today's Minneapolis Star Tribune Business section is a splashy profile of two documentaries on Wal-Mart. Both available on DVD, one pro, one con, the writer gives a tale of the tape on seven points. This would seem to be a fair treatment by the Strib, but is it really? Let's see.

ISSUE	Pro	Con
Health Care	Facts: 50 percent participate, better plan than many retailers offer	Anecdote
Cinematography	Relies on economists, not gimmicks	Heart-tugging shots of closed competitors
Globalization	Fact: it lowers prices.	Anecdote
Worker Testimonials	Anecdote	Anecdote
Perspective	Fact: makes 3 cents per $100 in sales	Anecdote
Small towns	Anecdote	Anecdote
Human Dignity	Quotes socialogist favorably	Anecdote

These documentaries are presented as equals, but there is no substance to the "The High Cost of Low Prices" documentary. It's nothing but an interview here and there. In a country this large, profiling an employer this large, you can always find a disgruntled worker, competitor, or politician to make these points. The "Why Wal-Mart Works and Why That Makes Some People C-R-A-Z-Y" documentary uses some but also has some general, verifiable facts and expert testimony to back its claims.

To cover unequal sides as equals is not good journalism; this is bias. A good journalist would make a dispassionate observation that one side made no case. Even if true, what's to be done that doesn't involve guns (to enforce restrictive laws) and lowers our standard of living?

Here is the drive time analysis for Bill Bennett on WWTC AM 1280, from about 6:30 to 7:30 AM for Friday Novembe 18.

Bill Bennett: 35:30 (minutes)
Commercials: 19:00
News: 2:30
Promos 1:20
Weather 1:00
Traffic 0:30

Looking at the big three talkers (sorry, Wendy), Bill Bennett certainly has the most content. I expected The Patriot to have the most commercials, but WCCO has 20 minutes to their 19, KSTP only 16. Another win for the Patriot is that they spend the least time on traffic reports.

KSTP had virtually no weather during my sample, but my window didn't capture their main updates at 5:45 an 7:30 am. For a station with all that weather-mania firepower, it seems curious that they would all but ignore it for almost two hours, at least when the weather is uneventful.

My personal habit is KSTP first half of the hour, WWTC the second half, no WCCO. I will sneak a listen to Resusse after a Vikings gane, though.

In the November 20 Minneapolis Star Tribune, Steve Brandt tells us of over-crowded classrooms. Grab you wallets. Here we go again.

You see, voters gave the Minneapolis Public Schools an additional levy in 2000 (and earlier) to specifically reduce class sizes. This was done, only to find the same problem once again in 2005, at least in certain grades and subjects. The dedicated funds ear-marked for a specific purpose have once again have found their way to the labor bargaining table as former Governor Arne Carlson often complained. Some of you may remember the late Gary Sudduth's 1997 demand for an accounting of $500 million in state and federal money that was supposed to raise minority test scores. The scores went down, the money was spent largely on salary increases according to one official at the time.

This scenario has played out in the suburbs, too, many times. When times are good, class size reduction is a priority, spending goes up, and yes, the sizes drop. When times aren't so good, the "squeezed" districts quietly allow the class sizes to rise again. That is, existing teachers get pay increases before any departing or retiring teachers are replaced.

The Minneapolis Public Schools have the highest per-pupil funding in the state. We can't even figure out where the suburban districts are spending their last 20% or so. To shore up some popular classes like those in the article should not require pleading to the public; just do it. In a budget that large, there must be plenty of less important work being performed.

Now, I don't believe in school operating levy referendums per se. We elect school boards, give them the power, just like the city or county. Voting down such referendums solves nothing in the long run and creates short term problems for everyone involved. The focus as always must be on the spending and results, not the resulting taxes.

The school boards (and the unions) must answer a fundamental question: if class sizes are so critical, why don't they cut something else less important? As it stands now, class size reductions are just a sponge to absorb excess tax receipts when times are good, then squeezed when times aren't so good.

Here is the drive time analysis for Bob Davis on KSTP AM 1500, from about 6:30 to 7:30 AM for Tuesday Nov 22.

Pure Bob Davis: 18:10 (minutes)
Commercials: 16:00
News: 13:30
Sports: 9:10
Traffic 2:20
Promos 0:40
Weather 0:20

News inxcludes the 90 second Rush Morning Update and the 7 minutes of "news of the weird" like stupid bank robber stories.

I say "pure Bob" because Bob is also on for that "news of the weird" and sports with Patrick Reusse. His mike is on for about 35 minutes total, the national average for talk show hosts.

I was up eary this morning and got the idea to record on my Pogo an hour of morning drive on WCCO-AM, about 6:30 to 7:30. Here's what I got for this 61 minute sample:

20:00 Commercials (18)
10:40 News (4)
8:00 Union Gospel Mission PSA (11)
4:40 Sports (2)
4:30 Weather (11)
4:00 Entertainment news (3)
3:10 Medical news (1)
3:00 Traffic reports (6)
1:20 Promo's, station ID's (6)
1:10 School closing announcements (4)
0:30 Business news (1)

20 minutes of commercials per hour is alas typical these days. But rather than bunch them like the Patriot does in 4 minute onslaughts these were short bursts from 10 seconds to 2 minutes, eighteen in all. That's what the parenthesized numbers are, the number of segments, 67 in all.

So what we have here is an intense stream of sound bites, the longest "content" segment being a whopping 4 minutes of local news at the end. The average segment lasts less than a minute. And the segments don't follow any theme. What you hear this minute cannot be used to predict what you'll hear the next.

I'll do the same for some other stations, and maybe I'll do WCCO again. Today they were fund-raising for the Union Gospel Mission and its annual holiday meal programs, certainly a worthy cause. I'm curious what those 8 minutes are normally used for.

I upgraded to digital cable and high speed internet last August. Everything worked great until the colder temperatures began playing havoc with my 15 year old outside wiring. Maybe the windstorm that felled hundreds of trees and knocked our power out for four days had an effect, too. It seemed like the internet would drop out when the temperature fell below 40 degrees. I didn't want to start any posts if I couldn't finish them. I've managed to leave a comment here and there, but little more.

Well, I had the boys out from Comcast this morning and we replaced it all from the pole on in. And now the splitters are indoors, too.

I ran a few tests, and it's wonderful again. Powerline News still takes 15 seconds to load, but that's not a connection speed issue.

How did I ever survive on dial-up?

Looking at the tallies for St. Paul Mayor, Joe Soucheray wondered on Wednesday if a number of other Democrats regret not running as well. It was 69 percent to 30 percent in a race between two Democrats. The difference was obviously Kelly's endorsement of George W. Bush for re-election in 2004, an unpardonable sin as I wrote earlier. Anyone short of a Republican could have beat Kelly. Just say you're pro-life and support the public schools. As a judge noted 20 years ago, a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. Now we find that ham sandwiches can be elected to public office as well.

After running against Bush, winner Chris Coleman claims, no, it was all about him, that the good people of St. Paul really do want their taxes raised another 10 or 20 percent.

I'm reminded of when Paul Wellstone first won his Senate seat in 1990. His plucky style and clever campaigning were certainly important, but it was dissatisfaction with the incumbent Rudy Boschwitz that made it all possible. Senator Boschwitz had become a bit arrogant and insufferable, sharply criticizing his own party at any sign of disagreement. (er, Mr. Pawlenty?) I, too, voted for Wellstone in 1990. Boschwitz had to go.

Wellstone took this "negative" vote as a sign that his 1960's liberalism is what we wanted, only to find local coffee shops refused him service for spouting 1960's anti-military rhetoric. He toned it down, but kept the faith to be voted down 96-3 on a regular basis, accomplishing nothing.

Mayor-elect Chris Coleman hopefully understands his good fortune and will not let his ego unravel the accomplishments of Randy Kelly.

What is it, two weeks now of the French riots? Joe Soucheray weighed in yesterday, saying, well, all he really had to say was that he was reading everything he could on this. This includes Mark Steyn, but only to wonder how to pronounce his last name like 'lean' or 'line'. His final thought before moving on to the fall foliage crisis brought on by the warm weather: I wouldn't go to France right now.

Still, it was much better than Wendy Wilde earlier. Cheney has no morality. Bush lied. Joe Wilson is a saint. Scooter Libby is the tip of the iceberg. All this and more were corroborated by her regular guest Professor David Schultz of Hamline University whom she dubs "Fact Man" complete with Batman theme music. It was difficult to follow at times, as both are fast talkers. (Ever notice that, that it might be on purpose to choke off your opponents' responses?) But "Fact Man" quickly wandered off to the Democratic Party talking points, whether true, unsupported or disproven.

My favorite moment was the Wal-Mart bash. Did you know that Google is a much better employer than Wal-Mart? They pay better and have much better benefits. This just before a paid ten minute segment with a union local representative trying to unionize Wal-Mart. That Google is virtually white-collar and Wal-Mart is mostly blue-collar, oops, sorry, I forgot. No facts allowed on Air America.

Work and family have mostly kept me off the air for several days, but part of it has also been some intermittent internet service. I am having Comcast out later this week to replace the splitters and other outside wiring, which is 15 years old.

But also I found that the LinkSys Wireless Game Adapter was defective, meaning I've had to share my "good" wireless bridge that LinkSys no longer makes with my son's X-box. In looking at this "gaming adapter" that is "specially designed" for gaming consoles, I see now that it is nothing special at all. It appears to be a wonderful use for older chips that consume twice the power crammed into a designer case. I'm guessing that the heat so noticeable on the outside eventually cooked the insides.

The good news is that a plain old bridge runs the X-box just fine, and proivdes additional ports for when my son's friends bring their X-box's over for tandem play. In other words, keep it simple.

It's a wide field, but at the moment, the award goes to the city of Moorhead, Minnesota. Why? Because they have a smoking ban, recently expanded to cover government-owned outdoor areas.

Why is this dumb? After all, Fargo, just across the border in North Dakota, has a smoking ban, too. There's no "Anoka County" in the area, so it's a level playing field. Granted, it's an falling tide that lowers all boats, but at least the misery is spread equally.

So again, why is this dumb? Because Moorhead should take advantage of Fargo's lapse in judgement and repeal its smoking bans - all of them. If you've driven on both sides of the Red River, you know why. Fargo is bustling and expanding. Moorhead is a ghost town by comparison, and given the significant difference in the state business climate, it's likely to continue its steady decline.