Speed Gibson

Joe Soucheray might call this a link of sorts. Yesterday, we sat in our local high school auditorium to see our son and others going to the prom do the Grand March. I realized that our seats in this 1961 building are far more comfortable than those in the Metrodome.

Which in turn leads me to hte Minnesota Vikings, shopping again at the Legislature for a new stadium, this time in Minneapolis, on the Metrodome site. Why not just remodel the Dome, which after all, is a reasonable football venue.

No, the roof doesn't retract. So what? Hundreds of millions to open a roof for fewer than 10 games a year (included pre-season), given our climate? Playoffs? Forget it, far too cold.

No, you won't have any new suites. But at other new stadiums, suite space is being reclaimed because there are no longer enough well-heeled customers, usually corporations, to rent them. Sarbanes-Oxley and other scrutiny has seen to that. The Vikings won't find many buyers either, especially at the higher rents they will no doubt charge.

No, you won't have any related east side redevelopment. That was promised for the Metrodome, and it never happened. Fool me once ...

No, just remodel the dome. Put in some nice seats in the better sections, with cushions. Again, without 81 Twins games, they won't get much wear. Make them a little wider, and add another 4 plus inches of leg room. Cup holders, like a movie theater? Since you get fewer seats per square foot, charge a little more for these sections.

Go a little fancier, add some WiFi with game content available. It's still 80 percent cheaper. But as long as gullible "negociators" like Mike Opat are around, you can hardly blame the owner for holding out for largely public financing.

We have a dog, always have. But it's under 20 pounds, and barring a couple of accidents, has never escaped our fenced yard or leash. We like most other breeds, including larger ones, but they're not suited to city life.

That said, it's time to outlaw these larger, more agressive breeds that have been mauling several victims recently. And when there is such an attack, vigorously prosecute their owners.

Can we cut the crap about, "Oh, they're no different than other breeds. It's how you train them!" Perhaps, but there is no reason to take the risk. Besides, too many such owners train them to be agressive despite what they say on camera. Spend some time at one of these dog walking parks, and you'll soon see for yourself.

And by the way, this isn't a class issue. In my walking hobby (15 cities so far), I was confronted by more loose dogs in Plymouth than the other 14 cities combined, about a dozen.

I see that as North Hennepin Community College, now 40 years old, is expanding to soon offer four year degrees. This is wrong.

First, the already bloated MnSCU system already has plenty of four year campuses. We don't need another, i.e., it's a waste of tax dollars.

Second, this defeats the purpose of a junior college like North Hennepin. It cheapens the brand a little. It encourages some who would otherwise move on to a true four year program at, say, SCSU or Mankato or even the Univesity of Minnesota to settle for what will almost certainly be an academically inferior program because it cannot offer the wider variety of electives of the larger schools.

I also think students shouldn't limit themselves to this more closed social environment. Not that the wild party life at SCSU is right for everyone, but two years at a quiet commuter campus is enough.

But let's focus on the money - our money. If we need more upper division capacity, let's beef up a real four year program, which also may prove less expensive.

First, King has penned one of his best ever at SCSU. He takes on yet another Star Tribune editorial in favor of still higher income taxes, dovetailing it with some classical thoughts of what it once meant to be middle class.

Most of the justification for raising the top income tax rates stems from a tax incidence study that shows the upper 10 percent of income earners actually pay slightly less as a percentage than some lower deciles. So not only will Minnesota quietly allow the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) to ensnare even more such taxpayers, a "super AMT" fourth bracket will finally cancel out all those loopholes, shelters, tax dodges and "sweetheart" deals!

In other words, the posted rates don't really matter. If at the end of the year you haven't paid what the DFL subjectively thinks you should have paid, don't worry, you soon will. Apparently your worth as a citizen is strictly a function of how much treasure you send to St. Paul. The jobs you provide, the investments you make, all that philanthropy and public service don't count. Not for the DFL, anyway.

Our Prime Minister won't veto everything. On Almanac, he clearly signaled he would sign a smaller Mall of America expansion. The Smoking Ban has more to fear from House Rep. Tom Rukavina than Gov. Pawlenty. Bonding? Why not?

I'd sure like to believe that Tim Pawlenty will actually veto all those pucks headed his way. But his utter collapse in 2005 is too fresh in my memory, and apparently in the DFL's, too.

The most hopeful sign is that the DFL itself seems to be pulling back just a little. Maybe they'll wind up only proposing $4.5 billion instead of $5 billion in new taxes.

I also think Pawlenty may just have learned something from 2005 and from Sue Jeffer's challenge. All that compromise, all that spending got him absolutely nothing. Only Hatch's E85 meltdown saved him, and just barely.

Will the Pawlenty of 2003 rise from the dead? I'm crossing my fingers.

I am very frustrated at the moment, enough to indulge in a seemingly unfeeling remark. For while dozens of innocents were murdered this past week, the current crop of alleged designers / engineers responsible for ceiling fans and light fixtures go on living.

Yes, I'm installing some new ceiling lights. With proper design and parts, a 15 minute job once the old fixture is down. Oh, but that's only true if your ceiling box is the newer 4 inch square model, not the older 3 inch round. And only if you have the correct size wire nuts to replace the undersized ones supplied. And only if you have X-ray vision to guide screws that are at least 1/4 inch too short to begin with through a mat of fiberglass insulation.

I had enough spare parts for the first, though the short screws added 10 minutes and much frustration to the first. For the second, off to the hardware store to get the proper screws. And of course, I have to mount them off center because their mounting bar isn't one of the dual mount designs you used to see until about 10 years ago.

Maybe I should insist that Menards or whoever open the box first, and further insist they supply the proper size wire nuts and proper length screws gratis.

This isn't among life's biggest troubles, but it is 100% avoidable with a little forethought by the designers. Maybe they should be forced to install one themselves. If you can't do it in 15 minutes (30 for a fan), with just the parts supplied, the product goes back for redesign, and you go out for reemployment elsewhere.

Jason Lewis said, quite plausibly, that the Global Warming Day of Action ("GWDA") rally gave "the media" a perfect cover for all but spiking the story. But that's only half the story, the other half being that the tax rally also allowed "the media" to conceal the fact that the GWDA rally was a flop.

Consider:

• The GWDA had money from several corporate and non-profit sponsors.
• The GWDA did a better job promoting the event, both locally and as part of the national effort.
• This metropolitan area is solidly blue.

For all that, they could only manage a few hundred visitors, people already convinced no doubt. (Same for the tax rally, to be fair.) Just as the tax rally exceeded our expectations, the GWDA no doubt fell far short of theirs.

In a word, the Global Warming Day of Action was: unimportant.

Newspapers, having generally more time and more space, should be more thorough than TV news, right? In the case of Saturday's Capitol events, yes, TV made a number of mistakes, mostly sins of omission as I documented in the prior post. But our newspapers didn't do much better, commiting the same basic mistake of co-mingling the events, portraying this as a competition bordering on conflict.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran maybe 10 inches plus a contentious photo, inside the Metro section. The headline was playfully biased: "Planet lovers and tax haters mix it up at the Capitol." Neither group came to mix it up. The tax protesters were there protesting high taxes born of exstravagent spending, not taxes in general. Even to suppose that the Global Warming activists are truly planet lovers might be a stretch.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press ran a much smaller picture, but twice the article length, buried in the Local section. They had headline trouble, too: "2 rallies span political divide - Tax foes vs. global warming protesters."

Both articles focused on the supposed conflict and contrast, as did much of the TV coverage, brief as it was. This was a mistake, for the juxtaposition was happenstance. The Global Warming Day of Action was part of a national effort, not scheduled to counter one state's tax rally. Yes, there was a little intrigue as a result, but neither rally nor the readership was served by this approach.

Instead, I would have covered each as free standing events, with maybe a short paragraph on the overlap at the end to close it out.

If and to what extent local TV newsrooms choose to cover events like Saturday's tax rally and the adjoining Sierra Club event is their business. But it's disconcerting to see how poor the coverage was. After all, how hard is it to get this story right? If you're taking the trouble to send cameras, why not take just a little more time to at least get the basic facts right.

Channel 4 only covered the rallies at 6 pm, nothing at 5 or 10 pm. Total time at 6 pm was 38 seconds, 8 seconds of general lead in, 13 seconds for the tax rally, 17 seconds for the Sierra Club event. The focus was on the potential conflict between the groups. No coverage of what was said at either event was provided. A clearly false statement by a Sierra Club organizer, that they were unaware of the tax rally, was aired, though they noted that the tax rally had booked it first in January. Attendance was said to be hundreds, with no breakout or suggestion that one was massive larger than the other.

Channel 5 had nothing at 5 PM either, and I couldn't record the 6 PM edition. But at 10 PM, there were 10 seconds of combined lead in, 49 seconds of the tax rally, then 23 seconds for the Sierra Club. The "combined" crowd was given as 5,000. The video was far and away the best, and KSTP clearly won best coverage in my book, even if they, too, missed the size mismatch.

Channel 9 at 9 PM split the coverage. Oddly, the small Sierra Club event coverage ran first, and got more time, 51 seconds to just 43 seconds for the tax rally. The video didn't give any size perspective, though they at least used the word "thousands" regarding the attendance. I suspect the Sierra Club will be happiest with KMSP's coverage.

Channel 11 at 10 PM snuck by with a quick 18 seconds for the tax rally, 10 for the Sierra club. It was one of those "reporter live in the newsroom" segments, with video in a background inset. They at least showed a few words from Rep. John Kline. A lot of coverage given that they said that "dozens" attended the rally. I kid you not, they said "dozens."

My point is not one of vanity, but of illustration. Here is an event that many of us bloggers attended, for the whole two hours, seeing the thousands, seeing the much smaller rally from the excellent vantage of the Capitol steps. We heard all the speeches, we saw the many public figures, like U.S. Reps. Kline and Bachmann, and several GOP legislators including Rep. Marty Seifert.

Later on TV, we see a general mischaracterization, not largely of bias really, for I suspect the Sierra Club isn't happy with their sparse coverage either. Perhaps it's just a manpower question, especially given it's a weekend. But limited manpower and a little bias can induce laziness, and that's the real problem here. So little additional effort was required to get this story - both stories - right.

It directly calls into question the accuracy and reliability of the rest of these broadcasts, where we have no direct experience to the contrary.

I've been to every one of the April tax rallies, including yesterday's. I could be wrong, but I think this was the largest to date. There was quite a turnout at the first one that featured Jesse Ventura, but I think this one was larger. Someone said 5 to 7 thousand, I'd say even 5 might be pushing it, but certainly there were thousands.

The "global warming" event was insignificant by comparison, outnumbered 5 to 1, a few hundred at best. At one point, a number of them gathered at the edge of the tax rally, presumably to see what we were doing, wondering why their rally was such a dud perhaps. One reason? We stood outside, ingesting the wonderful unprocessed sunlight while they huddled under tents, probably applying sunblock.

A couple of crowd reactions were interesting. The reading of the letter from Senator Norm Coleman clearly didn't go over with this crowd. It probably didn't help that it was read by GOP State Chair Ron Carey, also not universally popular with Republicans. Coleman was elsewhere in Minnesota and obviously could have been here. He's Minnesota's most adept politician, though, and avoided having some footage taken of him getting heckled by Republicans, like Rep. Steve Sviggum received in prior rallies.

The other reaction was during the "Green Eggs and Ham" interpretive list of all the new taxes proposed by the DFL. The proposed tax on newspapers stopped us short. After some quick chin rubbing, I think the consensus was that this was a tax we could live with!

The crazy invocation aside, it was another great experience. It's just nice to see so many others that understand the situation for what it is, not the adolescent fantasies of the DFL.

I went to the Jason Lewis tax rally on Saturday at the Capitol. Parking has never been a problem in the past, but the likelihood of a large turnout and the unknown of the other "Global Warming" event made me decide to risk public transportation. Yes, I took the bus, through north Minneapolis, transferring in downtown Minneapolis.

I took the #22 to downtown Minneapolis via Lyndale, then the #16 though the University campus, past the new Gopher stadium site. Then the tour of University Ave, targeted for proactive blight by the next leg of light rail. I took the #94 express back to Minneapolis, connecting immediately to the #5 back to Brooklyn Center via Emerson & Fremont.

The bus gives you the chance to really survey the homes and businesses along along the way. I saw so many nice houses and properties, along Emerson Avenue in particular, it made me wonder just how bad does urban government have to be to make these areas largely undesirable?

I arrived early to do get an hour of exercise, walking through downtown St. Paul. I also saw a little of downtown Minneapolis, walking four blocks along the Nicollet Mall. It was quite the contrast.

Minneapolis was waking up, people everywhere, stores open. By comparison, St. Paul was dead, not much open, not many people milling about. Somehow this figures with my impression that St. Paul is the land of the white collar public sector, downtown and the Capitol being ground zero. They don't work weekends other than a few manning the boards at public broadcasting, and the tour guides at the Science Museum.

St. Paul has its own neighborhood treasures, but its downtown isn't one of them. Given the natural beauty of the area, better than Minneapolis I think, again I wonder. How bad does the government have to be?

The Minneapolis School Board made it official, closing six schools at the end of this year. Five of six are in North Minneapolis: Shingle Creek, North Star, Jordan Park, Lincoln, and W. Harry Davis. Tuttle is just over the river on NE Broadway. As part of this, North High School will add grades 6, 7, and 8.

While certainly a tactical retreat, maybe this is ultimately good news for this largely minority area. These parents began to realize a few years ago that the Minneapolis Public Schools were either unwilling or unable to meet their expectations. You may remember that the NAACP sued the district in 1995, reaching a settlement in 1999. Open Enrollment (partly funded by that settlement), Charter Schools, private schools, and home schooling has reduced the "capture ratio" of new Kindergarten students to about 50% and falling.

It seems reasonable to start asking another question: if the Minneapolis Public Schools are only serving half the population, why are they getting all of the tax receipts? Granted, they lose much of it to Open Enrollment and Charter Schools, but the rest stays in the District - and goes where?

The minority community is in a strong position to demand reforms pinning the money to the students, not the schools, be they public, charter, suburban, or private. After decades of decline and failure, what else is left to try?

OK, Howard Stern is keeping Sanjaya alive, even out of the bottom three. Somebody else must be doing the same for Haley. She's got legs, she knows how to use them, but she can't sing.

So, we lose another good contestant, Gina Clocksen, #3 or #4 in my estimation. I hate the tongue stud, but otherwise she's got it, the rocker lock tempered by a beautiful smile, with a strong voice. And I liked how she always says thank you after every number. I suspect she's on her way, and I think I'll gamble on her first CD.

Meanwhile, we have to sit through at least three more songs between Sanjaya and Haley, who aren't going to sell CD one. Phil and Blake don't excite me much, either. Jordin's on the rise, LaKisha on the wane, while Melinda can do no wrong. My dark horse is Chris Richardson, who I felt did a great job two weeks ago and last night.

So give me Melinda plus Chris or Jordin in the final and I'll be happy.

I heard an episode of this early 1950's radio show today (OTR Now on Live 365). It vas great Amerikan struggle against the Bolsheviks, Comrade!

It got me thinking someone should do an "I was an Activist for the DFL" series. This legislative session alone could produce enough intrigue for the entire first season.

The Minneapolis School District is under attack. I'm using the Craig Westover perspective, that District 1 is the territory served, not the government owned and run schools that ostensibly serve that district. It is those schools and their allies at Education Minnesota and the Legislature that are doing the assaulting.

The Minneapolis Public Schools are imploding. Costs are rising as sharply as the enrollment is falling. Over half of new kindergarten students are going elsewhere, to charter schools, private schools, religious schools, home schools, and suburban schools via Open Enrollment.

The responses? Still more money, of course, now for E-12 instead of K-12. Presumably, "E" means the government schools get their hooks in earlier via preschool and all day kindergarten options. Meanwhile, we're told we need a moratorium on new charter schools. The High School League is pitching in to reduce transfers via Open Enrrollment.

This is a big problem for Education Minnesota and the DFL, for if all their enlightened policies worked, Minneapolis would be the jewel of the government schools. They have been denied nothing, including money. Without opposition, the liberals have no restraint on spending, which is why they run deficits despite the abundant cash coming in.

But rather than address the real problems that are chasing students out of the system, the educrats are quietly erecting walls to hold them in, no doubt sincerely thinking they can rescue ISD 1 somehow. They just need time, to review, write reports, consolidate, retrench, reallocate resources, all without acknowledging the real problems. And without acknowledging that the competition like the charter schools might be doing something better. Not everything, but some things.

The immediate strategy? Cut and run, closing several schools, abandoning the northside it looks to me. Maybe they've given up, maybe it's temporary, but how this fits a larger strategy escapes me.

I think I've read and heard over a dozen tributes to the late Herb Carneal, who I heard for every one of his seasons with the Twins. The best was by Patrick Reusse in Monday's Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Reusse empahasized Carneal's greatest skill, knowing when to stop talking and let the roar of the crowd tell you the ball went over the fence.

Last year I downloaded and listened to some old baseball radio broacasts from the 1940's. Those announcers spoke even less than Herb, who I imagine would have loved to continue that tradition.

But modern day radio requires the announcers to constantly sell tickets and sneak in adds throughout the action. Comparing then and now, then I hear baseball. Now I hear marketing.

Thanks Herb for 45 years done right.

I chanced to see a snippet of an interview with a legislator, presumably DFL, talking about property taxes. Paraphrasing, she said that we can all agree that property taxes are inherently unfair because they are not based on the ability to pay. I found this point of view very revealing, for I think most of us think property taxes are unfair because we're not getting our money's worth.

Are property taxes simply a funding mechanism for local units of government? Not any more, now that the State also gets a cut, and a larger cut if the DFL has their way this session. But let's ignore that for the moment.

Property taxes should be the primary funding mechanism for local government which provides the many services the owner requires: police, fire, streets, water, sewers, parks, and general city government. Prorating by property values within classes of property is a reasonable way of allocating those costs.

Since the state incurs some costs in providing property related services, it's not wrong for the state to assess property taxes, on everyone, not just commercial property.

Anything else, like education and welfare should not be funded by property taxes, since they are associated with people, not property. Stripped of these unrelated costs, property taxes can and should be paid by everyone, including churches, school districts, even park-and-ride MTC lots.

The worst thing we can do is perpetuate the current inequities of disproportionately taxing commercial property, waiving taxes for charitable and public properties, and loading everyone with unrelated costs. Regardless of your point of view on fairness, basing it on ability of pay doesn't make it more fair.

Why should someone making $50,000 living at a 1 acre $350,000 suburban house pay less than someone else making $150,000 residing in a $100,000 house on a quarter acre urban lot?

I've been a bit busy the past few days, finally catching up with Almanac from Friday. Overall, it was hard to understand what has to be false optimism by the Democrats. "He can't veto everything!" is their mantra, spoken with weak smiles. Are these people truly this cut off from the real world?

Apparently so, as evidenced by retired State Senator Jane Ranum's performance on the political panel. This woman is an idiot. I'm being kind in this assessment, for if she truly knows what she says is wrong but is playing it for advantage, I have much worse language to apply.

She lives in the past, in the DFL golden age when the Democrats ran everything and could raise spending without consequence. Every school bond and referendum passed. The auditors and the media seldom questioned why costs were rising so much faster than inflation and the population. Those days are gone, especially in this video and internet enabled age.

Each in their own way, all of the "progressives" in the Legislature embody this mixture of ignorance and myopia, living in a world that simply does not exist, promising a world that can never be.