The excitement around Instant Runoff Voting's success at the City Council meeting last Friday (May 26, 2006) has obscured a set of rather different comments from Don Samuels and R.T. Rybak during the discussion of the City sponsored blogs that followed. It was like blowback--a little democratic breeze gets answered by a mighty authoritarian wind.

Samuels in particular emerged as an unapologetic opponent of unsupervised free speech . Rybak made clear his desire to censor cable access television. If Republicans had spewed this bilge, Democrats would come unglued, crying out against the assault on civil liberties.

Mark these words from Herr Samuels:

. . .While I do value our freedoms. . . there are some of them that our community has not demonstrated the responsibility to bear. . . and. . .one, for me, would be certain freedoms within this new electronic category which has been as lethal as the guns that are pervasive on our streets. . . . I don't think that we have demonstrated the capability to deal with this freedom, neither by the ones who perpetrate it as weapons or by the ones of us who are called upon to oversee the responsible utilization of these media.

Until that day comes, and until, personally speaking, I . . . cease to be a victim of the irresponsible use and incapacity to supervise the freedoms that are now brought to us by these incredible advances in technology, I will have to vote against--and again, again, and again--until we demonstrate responsibility and supervising capability for our new freedom.

. . . All the advances we have have kind of gone to our head and our guts. . . . We forget that the freedoms that we have have worked, not because the freedoms themselves have virtue but because we ourselves as a nation have certain principles whether they be religious or spiritual or cultural--around fairness, hard work, honesty etc. that makes democracy work. . . .

Freedom of speech, unbridled, and without supervision, can create more harm than good. There's no doubt about that. If we, as a nation, continue to increase our freedoms while decreasing our responsibility both in terms of our laws and in terms of our responsibilities as citizens and as leaders to defend each other and protect each other from the abuses of people, then we do not deserve and will not maintain or sustain our democracy and our democratic principles. . . .

. . . Have no doubt about it, democracy and freedom of speech are not virtues in and of their selves. They can only exist within the framework of civility.

Do not delude ourselves that our freedoms are our highest goal or our highest value. No they are not. Our highest values are our cultural civility and fairness and kindness and generosity. And then freedom can come. . . . Unless we can find a way to turn the tide on this, then we will go down in a flame of freedom.

(Italics mine.)

A little context is in order here. Samuels clearly still smarts from the nasty election tussle that he went through in order to defeat Natalie Johnson-Lee for the 5th Ward seat he now holds. Samuels was not without fault in that fight, but "Pain is the eye of the beholder," as Mr. Samuels' new friend "Tough-Love" Tim Pawlenty has said.

If one watches the broadcast of this City Council meeting--and for the wonks and wonkettes in the crowd, the Committee of the Whole meeting that preceded it--one learns that Samuels is wielding his own privileged free speech as a weapon against civil libertarian 10th Ward representative Ralph Remington, who persisted in calling the Don on his bullshit.

This is a feud to watch--the complaint against Samuels, and the source of the "unbridled" free speech at his expense has been his insensitivity to African-Americans. Will African-American Remington and Jamaican immigrant Samuels play out some of the antagonisms still smoldering from the 5th Ward race?

Samuels speech set up comments by the Mayor wherein he makes clear his wish to rein in the free speech of City supported cable access--in the name of protecting his buddy, Samuels.

In classic management stylee, Rybak first says that "we" (meaning management) haven't done our job and then attacks the " people who run that television" for not doing their job in "fixing" the unbridled free speech of cable access programming. I can tell you from experience that there is more to come. Bosses don't talk this way without intending to fuck with the designated underlings. If you support public access television, start sending your notes to Mr. Rybak now.

The split between free speech advocates and pro-censorship autocrats goes all way back to the early days of the republic. Then as now, power always overlooks its own excesses while accusing the unwashed of not playing fair--or of not being civil. That Samuels and Rybak feel so morally justified and outraged just demonstrates how powerful they are feeling.

Remember, gentlemen, pride goeth before the fall.
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The ever vigilant and unwashed Avidor has posted excerpts of Samuels' and Rybak's May 26 performance art at

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yHX8BZcfvuI

Gluttons for punishment or thirsters for knowledge can catch the entire Council meeting at 10 PM and the Committee of the Whole meeting at 8PM on Minneapolis Cable channel 79 each day this week until June 4. (You can also view these as webcasts.)

Capture it now for posterity.

--Loosestrife

This is not news.

It was all detailed in early 2004 in the Hennepin County/Minneapolis Ballpark Proposal to Governor Tim Pawlenty's Stadium Screening Commitee, available at the heartwarming "Twinsville" website. The vision was part of the sales pitch made by the county and city to snag the new stadium. The Twins quit making the economic development argument for the Stadium awhile back, but local government picked up the slack.

While the County gets the criticism, let's not forget the silent partner in this ripoff, the City of Minneapolis, most notably mayor R.T. Rybak, whose greasy fingerprints are all over this "report." In fact, this document will be a fine historical artifact representing the Rybakian era of marketing speak and condo hype in Minneapolis.

I suppose we could blame Kevin Costner. Field of Dreams, font of this lyrical baseball crap that we all are having to endure, seems to be firmly lodged in Rybak's frontal lobes. Everything is a field of dreams for R.T.

Too bad Rybak didn't incorporate Costner's superior baseball movie, Bull Durham, into his sensibility. Baseball in this vision is about adults clinging to words, games, hope, and sinful diversion to survive a crushingly mundane existence. It's about literature, superstition, luck, and sex--not reports, angels, dreams, and development opportunities.

Walk down Washington Avenue and into the ghost town of the Mill District, full of condos and not much life. There's the stadium (sorry-"the dome") within walking distance. They tore down the Liquor Depot. The new Ikea, I mean Guthrie, is perched on the river, obscured from Downtown by a parking ramp. On game days, its a nightmare of cars, parking, and boorishness. Yeah, LRT comes through the area.

Squint and you can see Twinsville just over the horizon.

--Loosestrife

"Not even in the World Series have the Twins scored a victory as important as last weekend's triumph at the State Capitol," coos the Star Tribune as Mike Opat and a gaggle of jock-sniffing dweebs shove the new Twins stadium deep into our ass.

Doug Grow, a recent stadium supporting convert, gets off on throwing himself under the feet on stadium opposing female politicos, Representative Mindy Greiling from Roseville and Linda Koblick, District 6 Hennepin County Commissioner.

Then there is Sid Hartman, still playing that one note on his piano, saying (again) that without the stadium the Twins will leave. Someone poke Sid in the ribs and tell him that the Twins have their stadium--he can finally retire or go back to writing defenses of losing Minnesota sports franchises.

Let's not forget to applaud the "Three who made the Twins' stadium dream come true"! Paul Levy and Rochelle Olson mix the metaphors freely as they admire the "all-star lineup" that lubricated the stadium deal prior to insertion, naming three standouts.

That Jerry Bell gets special kudos is hardly a surprise: he was a paid advocate for this boondoggle. The Strib has a special place in its heart for honest hardworking corporate tools--especially if they move from the public sector to the private. As Levy and Olson point out, Bell worked for the parks and recreation departments in "St. Paul suburbs" before becoming a shill. Hmmm, I bet none of the St. Paul suburbs is paying for this Twins stadium.

Also singled out, Brad Finstad, a young Republican legislator from Comfrey, gets buried in baseball metaphors as he is lionized for his leadership in the Minnesota house, getting the bill through the session and conference committee intact. None of his constituents are paying for this stadium.

But Hennepin County District 1 Commissioner Mike Opat's constituents are paying for it. And for that, the Strib gives him special consideration as the "stadium plan architect." On the editorial page, it gets deeper.

. . . Opat did the heaviest lifting. He negotiated a tough deal with the Twins and never wavered in placing Minnesota's future ahead of day-to-day politics. "We had forgotten how to dream in this state. We need to dream. We need sometimes to do the things we want to do, not just the things we have to do," he said. "Not everything revolves around adding social services or cutting taxes."

If one watched Opat's snide performance at the Hennepin County Board Meeting on April 18 , one could already tell that this stadium was, in the lexicon of Minnesota development whores, "a done deal." More importantly Opat's constituents should remember how clear it was at that meeting that the man values democratic process not a whit and believes that it is the proper role of an elected official to operate as a public relations consultant to a sports franchise.

Come November, remember Opat's logic that a referendum on the stadium tax as mandated by state law was a deal killer, so it shouldn't happen. In other words, he wanted his dream-- process be damned, including your right to vote on the tax increase necessary to Mikey's fantasy.

If Linda Koblick doesn't go all Beatrix Kiddo on his ass, then voters should turn this smug bastard out in the fall.

A friend remembers lots of empty seats at the old Metropolitan Stadium, the outdoor park that Minnesota tore down in 1985, as mediocre Twins teams played out their seasons without a chance of making the playoffs.

I remember the Dome being filled to the brim as the Twins won the World Series in 1987.

For all but the hardcore fans, winning is the poetry so essential to baseball. Mike Opat's dream 500 million dollar open air stadium next to the garbage burner won't fill one damn seat.

--Loosestrife

While the Republicans of the Minnesota's 6th Congressional District embraced homophobia, xenophobia and pearls last weekend, the folks at the 5th Congressional District DFL convention endorsed a Muslim African-American who is further left (egads!) than most DFLers in the state.

Keith Ellison is unapologetically anti-war and continues to develop a progressive environmental awareness to complement an already strong sense of justice. He neither foregrounds his religion nor apologizes for it.

Michele Bachmann burrows ever further into the warm underbelly of Christian theocratic desire.

It's hard to imagine a starker contrast.

The City Pages had stories this week on both conventions but did not link them in any way. Over at the Daily Planet, however, a "centrist" voice bemoaned the extremism of both candidates.

Former Hamline Law School dean, Stephen B. Young trots out the tired argument that we just have to embrace the centrist tendencies of "the people," and everything will work out. Remember Jesse Ventura? Arne Carlson, for that matter? Remember Tim Penny? How about Bill Clinton? They all said the same thing, and they all are ultimately retrograde.

That Young is executive director of something called The Caux Round Table, "an international network of principled business leaders working to promote a moral capitalism," should be enough to place this artifact in context. Young is one of those business men who is afraid that Enron style excesses will create popular sentiment to regulate profit margins, something even a moral capitalist never likes. Judging from the Caux Roundtable Website, these ethical businessmen have also have some interest in making money off "sustainability." Clear enough. We all know the type.

But Young's article has a more chilling undercurrent.

First, Young links Ellison and Bachmann as representatives of "two self-centered extremes: on the right, intolerance and self-righteousness; on the left, intolerance and self-righteousness." That Bachmann is an intolerant ideologue is self-evident--her entire political career is predicated on it. Even within the Republican party, there are those who find her distasteful at best, corrosive of the party's more egalitarian traditions at worst.

What of Ellison? Tellingly, Young attacks his "multi-culturalism" as unpatriotic. Then he drops this, "A passion for all values is a commitment to none."

Now, multiculturalism is a slippery word to be sure. It's meaning can slide all over the page depending on the context in which it is used. But describing multiculturism (why the hyphen?), which in most cases at least implies tolerance of cultural difference, as a unprincipled moral relativism belies another agenda.

Here is Young.

Under the open norms of multi-culturalism, everyone is a perpetual victim, always slighted and denigrated by others who demonstrate lack of empathy with one'’s values and lifestyle choices. The struggle for equality and justice under multi-culturalism must go on forever as long as "others"” are out there to be intimidated and cowed into acquiescence.

Here, in tortured language worthy of the Ayn Rand Institute, Young makes clear his impatience with those who Ellison represents--the "others"--muddying the clear clean waters of Minnesota's mythical monocultural democracy. It is awfully hard to assess the Christian values of a Muslim like Ellison, doncha know.

Making clear his preference for Bachmann's "redemptive possibilities" albeit ones that are "too narrow," Young pulls out racial stereotypes and observes that ". . .Keith Ellison'’s community has no core, no discipline, nothing but the un-redemptive energies of self-absorption." Not his constituency, mind you, his community.

George Washington was a slave owning bumbler. Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution in United States history. Yet, Young cites these grammar school heroes as expressive of "a greater good respectful of human dignity" while invoking patriotism and "responsible individualism" in his final paragraph.

Thus, the new politics of the center is revealed as the old politics of nostalgia for the golden age that never was: America as Lake Woebegone--the monocultural white idyll of well-intentioned Christian moral consensus, ultimately conservative and capitalist to a fault. Not that far from Michele Bachmann's vision of your future. Just a little more catholic.

I heard Ellison on radio this week decrying the left's propensity for whining, saying it's not enough to gripe about 46 million Americans not having any health care. The job, he said, is to get them some health care.

If that is the unredemptive energy of self-absorption, so be it. I'll take it over moral capitalism any day.

--Loosestrife

". . . if we take a median from several respectable scientific projections, is that the world’s temperature will rise by five degrees Fahrenheit (roughly two and a half degrees Celsius) over the next hundred years, to make it hotter than it has been for 400 million years. At some level, these are the only facts worth knowing about our earth."


Bill McKibben has a short eloquent essay on global warming and our ostrich-like response to it.

"The excretion of our economy has become the most important influence on the planet we were born into."

Minnesota's carbon "excretions" have increased 20% since 1988.

How about those Twins?

--Loosestrife

"Pro sports stadiums today, megamalls tomorrow. The day after that? Maybe a NASCAR track in Woodbury or -- think big -- Disney World North in Duluth. Is there anything to which we can say no"?

--Katherine Kersten

Hmmmm.

St. Paul--Today, a group calling itself Bloomington Avenue Drug Sellers (BADS) will send a lobbyist to the Capitol to "open the lines of communication with legislature about illicit markets' role in the Minnesota economy."

BADS spokesperson, John Thompson, says that the economic activity generated by the street merchants of Bloomington Avenue in Minneapolis, roughly from 24th Street to the Greenway, needs to be recognized for what it is: the first stage in an economic resurgence.

"Without the entrepreneurial spirit of the dedicated small business people of Bloomington Avenue, the street and the surrounding area would simply be a dead zone of economic despair. The revitalizing role of the street market along roads like Bloomington Avenue needs to be sufficiently appreciated by those in government. Through a process of promoting our vision for the area and dialoging with legislators, we hope to secure a bright future for the people of Bloomington Avenue." said Thompson at a small press conference Thursday.

The long-time lobbyist/consent manager emphasized that BADS is in it for as long as it takes to turn around the area, but he claimed that drug sellers are the victims of negative bias in the media. "The outdated views of the Minneapolis black market perpetuated by media stereotyping sets the community back and will slow progress in the area," said Thompson. "With wise investment and smart management, Bloomington Avenue could become a destination for tourists and residents alike, a place where the organic diversity of the market promotes natural cultural exchanges without government interference. We, too, are the global marketplace."

Eventually, BADS hopes to secure funding for an "International Market Plaza" at the corner of 25th and Bloomington, the site of the old Commodore Bar. After a period of "getting to know each other," BADS will approach the legislature next session with a plan for public/private partnership to move "the traffic off the street" into this state of the art open air market that will include drinking fountains, restrooms, bus style shelters with overhead heat, booth space, a coffee shop, a small amphitheater and its own private security force.

"This will be our pilot project, but BADS members have traveled the country studying an array of unintentional street markets," Thompson said. "We hope to take things to the next level, with a planned market that mitigates the problems of residents and street merchants alike while creating a positive experience for customers."

After the initial investment of $ 25 million, the State, County, and City governments would have very little to do with the area.

"We envision an amenity like 'Old Town' in the movie Sin City, where the prostitutes run the red light district as a kind of worker owned collective." Law enforcement would become the responsibility of BADS, saving the City of Minneapolis thousands of dollars. BADS would contract with City for fire protection, paying the City directly for services that the area currently receives for free.

BADS would also pay for road maintenance and all infrastructure traditionally covered by the city, county, and the state. Artist's conceptions of the redevelopment of the area showed housing, commercial, and even light industrial development to provide jobs. "We recognize that we must diversify the economy of this area to remain viable, and we have plans for mixed use development and lots of affordable housing in the area immediately around the International Market Plaza," said Thompson.

"We believe that investment in localized neighborhood economies makes far more sense than sales taxes to build stadiums or government funding of mall expansion."

--Loosestrife

Local unions love to attack Walmart. More power to them, too.

But, really, shouldn't we turn a little more attention towards our local benefactor, Target?

Read this article. Apparently the UCFW knows what's up.

In spite of Target's first rate marketing, not one Target store is unionized, the wages suck, and Target is a master "of surveillance and investigative technology."

I prefer Huckabees.

--Loosestrife

Now that Doug Grow has come out as a pro-stadium whore of babylon, he must have been itching to do a pointless puff piece about a Green in order to recover some street cred as an alt-populist.

2nd Ward Greenie Cam Gordon, nicely filling what was formerly the Dean Zimmermann role, gets the Grow/Green treatment for his street dancing stunt hearing. If I read Grow's column correctly, Gordon could kill this stupid city ordinance prohibiting dancing in the street with little fanfare since no one believes it needs to be in the City Code.

But Gordon, like Dean Zimmermann before him, apparently believes good Green government is about milking minor issues for maximum column inches--while Rome burns. Gordon has been doing this for over a month now.

Meanwhile, Doug has taken to singing at work, now that the burden of principled opposition to the Twin Stadium boondoggle has been lifted from his weary liberal shoulders. And of course he is singing "Dancing in the Streets."


--Loosestrife