Poor city Library management leads to unexpected higher costs

Like Gomer Pile would say “Surprise Surprise Surprise”. The Minneapolis Shadow isn’t surprised in the least at this revelation, however I’m surprise the County is surprise. What did you expect out of Minneapolis? They can’t find their budgetary butt with two hands for crying out loud! It is simply outrageous for the Twins Ballpark sales tax to be going to the expanded library hours, the fact that the county needed to bailout the city, and that we are now discovering higher costs in the take over. Government management at it’s very best! We should hold all parties involved accountable for this mess.

Crime and Violence: Who is to blame

The elected officials and news outlets like the StarTribune need to stop beating around the bush and address the violence and crime problems. In today’s edition of the StarTribune is a quote that the shooting that happen in 2006 that killed Brian Cole happen after Cole left the Juneteenth festival. In the previous articles, one dated May 28 on the Cole murder trial, mentions it having happen at the festival. Way to cover up for the festivals’ good name. We can’t have this festival be marred by violence now can we. Even if this is a minor detail in a very large issue, it points to a number of problems that are at the very heart of the reason why the violence continues…one major fact is that no one is willing to face this head on. The city council, mayor, and other elected officials aren’t crying out for this violence to stop. They are mute on the very issue. It is outrageous that this behavior is allowed to continue without a strong public stance and action plan by the very people who are responsible for stopping this madness. The press is as much to blame for not calling these folks into account for it. So the madness continues.

Juneteenth shooting .. Where is the outrage

We in Minneapolis have become way to use to this. Where is the outcry from the public and elected officials to address this issue of crime and violence?
One of the great things about Minneapolis is the fun outdoor activity that makes up life in the summertime. This sort of stuff really “kills” the joy of these types of events, and I choose my words here very carefully. What does it take for the “elected” in this town to become serious about this violence problem? Remember the Cole murder? Maybe this incident was another “I didn’t mean to cause any harm”. If these animals that did this on Saturday get caught they should be locked up and the key thrown away. It would not only stop them from ever doing again, but also prove to others thinking about doing the same that society doesn’t put up with this type of behavior. If this isn’t done we will continue to experience this over and over again.Consider this a calling out of Mayor Rybak, City Council members, County Board, State and Federal Representatives and Senators, and Judges. The Minneapolis Shadow challenges to take clear, decisive, and public action to properly address the problem of the violence that grips this city.

Murders, Robberies, Crime Alerts, and the City Council and Mayor are mute on crime

Where is the “elected” outrage and public rally to solve these problems? The “elected” are too busy building gardens on rooftops, laying down train tracks, tearing down 100 year old laws, building stadiums, handing out movies at libraries, building bikes paths, need I go on. What about focusing on the number one task that all elected officials are responsible for…protect the public interests? The number interest of the public is staying safe. Looks like these folks are more interested in building monuments to themselves that performing the duties for which they are elected. The general public is also to blame here for not holding these people accountable. Elected officials do have a lot to do, but there are basic things that they are responsible for at each level of government. If we, the public, continue to harp on them for our own “little pet projects and selfish interests” then they can’t be expected to stay focused on their clear areas of responsibility. Public safety is the number one concern for all city officials and is one of the top livable factors. A city can have all the bells and whistles it wants, but they all go to waste of the city isn’t safe to be in. Murderapolis has returned to the landscape, and if our elected officials don’t get a handle of this now we will be too far gone to solve it later.

Eden Prairie schools...at least someone gets it

Here is what seems to be a good approach to solving the achievement gap problems at least at one school. Are you listening MPS? Solid solutions make for good plans of action.

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/19974154.html?page=1&c=y

Lurking ordinance and governmental responsibility

Robin Garwood, CM Gordon’s aid, posted the following comments to the posting on lurking. I wanted to focus on this and her comments below are in litials with the Minneapolis Shadows comments in bold.
Your assertion that the Lurking ordinance "is being applied to those that are breaking it no matter what race they are" is unproven. Why? Because only 19 of the 136 adults arrested for Lurking in '07 (or 14%) were convicted of committing the crime. That's the legal standard that defines "breaking the law" in this society: being convicted. Not being arrested.
In order for someone, regardless of race, to get arrested they have to be doing something against a law on the books. People get tickets for speeding but can appeal it based on evidence that they were not. People get arrested or ticketed for crimes they didn’t commit on a daily basis, and that is what the justice system allows you to do, fight the arrest.
This is the problem with crimes which rely on police and prosecutors to determine and prove "intent" to commit a crime. Other livability crimes have concrete, visible, provable behaviors: someone tagged a wall, urinated in public, had an open alcoholic beverage in public, etc. That's why the vast majority of these arrests result in convictions.
Hate crimes convictions work basically that same way. Shall we get rid of them also?
This is why your metaphors don't work. Shoplifting is a provable behavior: someone took something and tried to leave without paying for it. Perhaps you believe we should criminalize "intending" to shoplift, and allowing police officers to arrest people based on their subjective assessment of that "intent." CM Gordon does not.
The ideal of the thought police state is very scary..thank you George Orwell. However, how does this differ from laws proscribing drug possession with intent to distribute? So does CM Gordon want to repeal this law also?
In a racist society - and yes, any serious study of racial disparity in poverty, unemployment, arrest and incarceration makes clear that our society is still deeply racist - those on the receiving end of racism will look more "suspicious" than others. Their behavior will more likely be taken as indicative of "intent to commit a crime" than exactly the same behavior on the part of a member of the majority population.
The fact that there is a racial disparity in the factors mentioned doesn’t draw a direct correlation to them being motivated based on a racist mindset. Your conclusion isn’t logical.
This is why the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia is looking into whether the Lurking ordinance violates the International Covenant on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (to which the US is a signatory and which obligates all units of government to eliminate racially discriminatory laws).
All governments should get rid of racially discriminatory laws! Yes, by all means. The US leads in that area. Discrimination in every form must be eliminated. How about equal rights for woman in Muslim countries? Oh, and by the way, the UN, which you are looking towards for guidance on human rights puts some of the biggest abusers of human rights in charge of the areas covering human rights.
Wow, put the inmates in charge of the asylum.
You ask about CM Gordon's agenda, and it is simply this: to spend our precious public safety resources effectively and constructively, and to make our city a more just place for all. And I'll have to respectfully disagree with you: this IS the business of the Council.”
How precious! Yea a lot of time and effort put into a hundred year law on the books but what about spending sometime on issues like addressing the ongoing murders in the city, and fighting drug and human trafficking? Try managing the city for once and get away from grandiose issues. If you interested in do that, then go work for an organization that is directly in the business of making these sort of changes on a national or global scale. I’m all for one person making a difference where they are, but we have major issues in the management of this city and our government seems more interested in dealing with these bigger issues than dollars and manhole covers. Sorry to say, but right now we need focus on the dollars and manhole covers which is the job you are hired to do. So do it!

Another day, higher temps, and another death in Murderapolis

This time it was a knife, not a gun, that up and killed a dude. Maybe it’s time to ban knives. I can hear the silly council now…ban ‘hand knives”. Or maybe, shut down the city when temps are over 75 degrees because it causes murders.
It’s the fourth murder in 4 days and no longer can the city brag about the rate being down over last year as it is continuing to climb. It is extremely sad to see all of this death occurring around us. What is even more distributing is that the city council isn’t doing much about it. People we need to take this stuff seriously. Memorial walks, candlelight services, and hand holding sing-a-longs aren’t going to solve anything. Police boots on the streets patrolling neighbors is the most effective way to get a handle on this problem. The mayor and city council are unwilling to forego all of their pet projects to buy enough police protection to perform their number one duty… protect the public.

Why rural and suburban folks should pay attention to the city

The simple answer is what happen here today will happen there tomorrow. Minneapolis and Saint Paul make up a huge slice of the Minnesota population pie. Forever has there been a political tug of war going among the population centers and the suburban and rural areas, but the lines are blurring and the issues more muddled.
We at the Urban Renaissance Coalition, and the Minneapolis Shadow personally, are focused not on political bent, but on factors that improve life in the “big city”. Most of these ideals aren’t specific to the city, but what affects the largest population areas today filters out to the rest of the landscape tomorrow. Take crime for an example. As an area crime rate increases so does the rest of the area surrounding it sooner or later. The economic impact of an increase in crime mounds as the problem isn’t addressed. Take car jacking for example. As the rate of car jacking goes up, so does your insurance rates. The thieves start moving around the area more towards outside of the city, and now you have a car jacking increase in the suburbs as well. If a city policy wound have been put into place sooner to curb car jacking then the thieves would have been more likely to move on to another state altogether, instead of taking root locally. Most of the time criminals magnate towards the population centers and spread out of there no matter the type of crime you are talking about. Hence the need for all areas to focus on what happens in the cities. Does this mean that the cities should get all of the attention? NO! The biggest problem is that the “elected” who administer the funds in the city are irresponsible with the money they receive and can’t be trusted to take care of the serious problems that plague the citizens living in the cities. How can any suburban or rural citizen have any trust in the city officials to spend money wisely when the city officials go on spending sprees for things like garden rooftops, bike paths instead of roads and bridge repair, movie rental libraries, stadiums for multi-billionaires, and ‘little trains that think they can” fix traffic congestion problems. However you suburban folks should keep in mind, what happens here today will happen in your backyard tomorrow. So pay close attention!

Justice..what justice in the Killing Fields of Minneapolis

Last night we good citizens were treated to another set, yes, set of shootings in Minneapolis. On top of that we experience a sentence for the convicted murderer, Myron David Norcross, of 19 years. This man used a butcher knife on Sherri Lynn Schaumburger killing her, and only gets 19 years. How is that possible? Of course, the StarTribune trying to make the sentence sound lengthy puts it into number of months. Typical! If we continue to give cushy prison time we will never get on top of the crime problems in Minneapolis. Of course the temputure is starting to rise, so is the crime rate.

Light rail .. Transportation Planning or just a way to pay for Mayor’s visions

Light rail having any positive effect on relief of congestion has good solid evidence on both sides of the water cooler. However, the proof is in the putting. Just drive down Hwy 55 in south Minneapolis and you’ll realize it was a lot easier during the period between completion of the road improvements and the start of the choo-choo. I side on the relief of congestion is bunk crowd. The Minneapolis Shadow has been a supporter of the hub and spoke system of elevated rail transit for over a decade. That design would have taken care of all the issues on the transit table for many decades to come. But, of course, leave it to the political game players not to do the right and most logical thing. Instead we have a disjointed answer that is more about development around the transit corridors then it is about effectively moving people from point A to point B. Hence we are looking at getting a rail corridor down Washington Avenue. Remember it was the Mayor Speedie Rybak who has plans to turn Washington Avenue into a world-class tourist attraction. Of course the city budget wouldn’t allow that to occur, so he had to figure out how to get the state and federal government to contribute. Well here is how. I guess holding public office isn’t about serving the public’s interest, but building monuments to ones self. The Minneapolis Shadow isn’t against the idea of having a world-class attraction, however the city should pay for it on it’s own.

Lurking around every corner is a city council member with an agenda

Cam Gordon wants to repeal the lurking law on the basis that it is unfairly applied to minorities and doesn’t produce a high conviction rate. What is your real agenda here Cam, or are you just that crazy? The law is being applied to those that are breaking it no matter what race they are. Why repeal a law based on higher rate being committed by one type of person or another? Maybe we should repeal all shoplifting laws if we found that most of the arrests were of women. Let us repeal all of the speeding laws because we find that a great deal of them are dealt down to lesser charges (like unlawful acceleration). Stop wasting time Cam and get back down to the real business of the council. Maybe the real problem is that not enough of these cases get convictions, ever think of that? I would hate to see someone arrested for lurking who doesn’t get convicted and then attacks someone. Maybe, Cam, you don’t care about that?

Where is the War on Crime?

Minneapolis had its 15th homicide of the year and this figure is down from the same period last year. However, it is number 15 and as the temperature goes up so does the crime rate, according to statistics. This could mean Minneapolis has only Mother Nature to thank. Where is the effort to drive the crime rate down lower? You have troopers on the road and a media campaign against drunk driving, the war on drugs (successes and failures), and other assorted efforts. Why not crime? Minneapolis keeps putting forth a band-aid and bailing wire approach to drugs, gangs, killings, and thief; but nothing that is sustainable and effective. As an example, the idiotic idling law started out as an effort against vehicle thief. In the last few summers we had a increase in vehicle thief and the silly council’s answer was the idling law proposal. Now it’s turned into the “in” plan of the day against high gas prices and global warming. The silly council doesn’t address the root cause of problem, because it would require some real action on an issue instead of playing politics.

The number one rule to keep a free society free is to govern for what is needed and not rule by what is popular.

Minneapolis City Council not sitting Idle

Thanks to Sandy Colvin Roy the Minneapolis Silly Council, in the name of environ”mental”ism and saving us a few bucks at the pump and from ourselves, passed an ordinance disallowing cars to idle for more than 3 minutes. Doesn’t the council, police, and citizens have anything better to do than micro-manage car idling time? Now the already overworked 911 operators will get calls to the police to give tickets if I need to run into the house to get something and leave my car running.
This just points to the fact that this council doesn’t take its job seriously. The schools are crap, we are being taxed to death, people being murdered in their homes and streets, and they are worried about cars idling too long. Give me a stinkin’ break, their brains must be idling too long! This is one of the most ridiculous moves I’ve seen them make yet. What is next? People are farting too much? Oh I’m sorry I must have misunderstood … they are letting idle my car if the temp is below 0 degrees. What if it’s 1 degree above? Am I going to be fined? My God where is it that we live, Russia? I can’t even find a slice of rationale here, this is just plain crazy! You people are insane!
The sane people in Minneapolis should go park their cars in front of city hall and let them run for hours just to piss the mayor and council off! If gas wasn’t so dammed expensive I’d organize it in a heartbeat. You people are from another planet! Come the next election, citizens, let’s hire some earthlings to do this job because the ones there now are not from around here.

School out of control

Northeast Middle School in Northeast Minneapolis was the scene of a mob attack on a student from outside the school. One kid that was already out of school was outside NE Middle reportedly taunting some NE students after class was over for the day. A mob of NE students attacked the kid and broke his neck. The Minneapolis Shadow finds this incident appalling, however not surprising. As I have stated before the main problem with most Minneapolis Public Schools is one of discipline. When the kids run the schools nothing gets accomplished. The administrators take the discipline, or lack thereof, issue way too lightly. I’m not in favor of running a military camp, however some of these students may need that. NE Middle has had a history of problems with not only academics but one of discipline for years now, and the administrators have turned a blind eye to the problem. The current principal looks towards programs for answers, but the only program she needs is one to re-program the school system’s approach towards handling behavior in the classroom. Without a tougher stance on behavior in the classroom, and the school grounds, nothing will change on the academic side of the ledger and incidents such as this one will grow in frequency. What good is a school if the kids are under threat during and after the school day on or near school property? Remember the northside program “Safe Paths to School” or what ever they named it? The police standing guard as kids walk to school. This sickens me to no end, and the city and school board are as much to blame as the kids involved in this. Now you have a kid in the hospital with a broken neck because the school board refuses to take the steps needed to solve the behavior problems. Sickening, just plain sickening!