Minneapolis / St. Paul Blog

Murderapolis part deux...or not...

It's impossible to dodge the onslaught of local news coverage about Minneapolis' steadily rising murder rate. If it's not the heavy storms taking up a huge chunk of 'CCO's news coverage, it's the "violence and death" that seem to be creeping into our Cities with equal vengeance. Yesterday there was a story in the Strib about a couple, David and Susan, who fled Minneapolis for the 'burbs out of fear of the supposedly ever-looming stray bullet. And then there's the eighth-grade "That's So Raven" fan, Darius Housch, whose collar bone caught a "gang banger's" bullet while he was fast asleep in his home last week. In other words, you better head to the basement and steer clear of those windows, because a tornado and a bullet are threatening to bust through your home at any moment. Or so they say.

So far this year, Minneapolis has recorded 31 homicides, an increase of 40 percent from this time last year. P'shaw! Right? Minneapolis is still relatively safe and crime-free, and our murder rate pales in comparison to other same-size cities that swallow much more violence in a year than we'll see in double that time. Come on. We're no Gary, Indiana!

Actually, according to the preliminary 2004 crime report released by the FBI this month, we are right on par with Gary: In 2004, Minneapolis and Gary both recorded 54 murders. Ok, granted, Gary's population is less than half of that of the city of Minneapolis (373,188 in 2003). But in terms of murders per capita, Minneapolis is shaping up to be more like Miami, whose city (pop. 376, 815) saw 69 murders last year. Still, while the murder rate has increased in Minneapolis, there's no reason to head to the storm shelter or uproot for the 'burbs. The city of St. Louis, whose urban population is similar but dwindling (332,223 residents), had more than double the murders of Minneapolis, recording 113 murders last year. Minneapolis' new motto: At least we're not St. Louis! 

ABC yanks ugly reality show featuring too much ugly reality

Looks like "Desperate Housewives" will be rerun and rerun, since ABC was forced to scrap its summer replacement, "Welcome to the Neighborhood."

In the shows - all of them have been completed - seven diverse families seek votes from three white families in a development called Circle C Ranch, outside Austin. The white families, through a series of interviews, competitions and social interactions, award a 3,300-square-foot, four-bedroom, 2½-bathroom home to the winner - a neighbor, the families say, who will fit in with the community's mostly Christian and Republican values.

What made the contestants diverse? Race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion. You know, pretty much every single thing that's illegal to consider when selling or renting housing.

The real question is how the entire season got filmed before it occurred to anyone that it was offensive or illegal.

The New York Times has a decent write-up on it available here.

In a piece printed on Wednesday's op-ed page of the Star Tribune, Rep. Mark Buesgens (R-Jordan) fulminated with a forked tongue. The premise of Buesgens' diatribe was that it was indeed better to shut down state government than cave in to the budgetary priorities of "former governors and other bureaucrats who never pushed themselves away from the dinner table of taxes." (The "former governors" citation was a snipe at Arne Carlson, who has become particularly outspoken about the hijacking of the state Republican Party by the no-new-taxes crew.) To that end, he repeats a couple of the Pawlenty Administration's more hackneyed falsehoods, claiming, for example, that the proposed state budget will already increase by eight percent, a calculation that embraces inflation on incoming dollars but pretends that same inflation won't affect the cost of government services.

Buesgens trots out the old standby: "Minnesota does not have a revenue problem-Minnesota has a spending problem," then flips his foot into his mouth by announcing that he's personally authored a racino bill "which would bring in $200 million to the state's coffers"? Why does the state need to raise that revenue? Why not just cut $200 million and cure the "spending problem"? A letter published in today's Strib also notes this contradiction.

Buesgens goes on to assert that Republicans have "offered an education package larger than the Democrats'." One would assume that he includes himself among those Republicans. But the education bill passed by Buesgens and the rest of the Republican majority in the Minnesota House was considerably smaller--even after it explicitly approves the levying of some property tax increases�than the education bill passed by the Minnesota Senate, where the Democrats are in the majority.

Perhaps Buesgens is referring to the revised education proposal put forth by Governor Pawlenty, which contains almost the exact same amount of money as the DFL's revised education proposal (albeit not as much for special education and early childhood education programs). But Pawlenty's recent plan to boost education funding requires passage of his proposed cigarette "fee." The Taxpayers League of Minnesota has subsequently stated the obvious, that this "fee" is actually a tax by another name, and has run media spots against it. And Buesgens is one of the state legislators shown on the Taxpayers League website as maintaining his no-new-taxes pledge.

So, Rep. Buesgens, are you for the "fee" or against it? Are you still abiding by the pledge or not? You couldn't even convince your Republican colleagues who comprise a majority in the House of the merits of your racino bill, so you have to make up your mind: Are you one of those who can't pull themselves away from the table of taxes, or do you prefer to low-ball funding for education? Instead of dissembling bluster that encourages a government shutdown, your constituents deserve straight answers to these questions.

Spotted in the North Loop neighborhood at 11:49 a.m.: A middle-aged, bearded man on a sport unicycle, wheeling through swirling 38 mph winds on his way into an alley.

 

Geriatric prisoners' care bankrupting states

This week's Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine carries a compelling story about the astronomical cost of providing end-of-life care to inmates. Health care costs are up, yes, but a bigger problem is that the number of imprisoned seniors with deteriorating health is skyrocketing. "Dying on our Dime" focuses on California, of course, but the issue affects Minnesota taxpayers, too.  

Sentencing reform is the primary culprit. The state's 1994 three-strikes law mandates life sentences without parole for certain repeat felons, and these recidivists�42,240 second- and third-strikers as of June 2002�will inevitably grow old and die in prison. Other than parole, the only ticket out of prison is compassionate release. Designed to liberate inmates who have six months or fewer to live and no longer pose a public threat, this legislation has emancipated an average of only 12 people a year since 1997. Inmates sentenced to life without parole or death are ineligible....

Last year, state legislators passed a bill to open the compassionate-release program to permanently medically incapacitated prisoners, such as a prisoner who is a quadriplegic, in hopes of saving millions of dollars. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office backed the plan. But Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed it, arguing that the legislation lacked "any mechanism to return these prisoners to custody" if they either recovered or posed a threat to public safety.

I don't know what kind of miraculous recoveries Schwarzenegger envisions, but the Times story makes it quite clear that this isn't an issue of whether to release inmates simply because of their age.

Frank Parker wears a bright orange jacket marked Sight Impaired as he wanders behind his three-pronged cane from bed to bed, saying hello, changing the channels, delivering gossip from the units and offering comfort to the dying....

Now 72, Parker is serving 15-to-life for murdering a man who he believed was having an affair with his wife. His time in prison, 20 years and counting, has not been easy on him�or on taxpayers. So far, doctors have treated Parker for three strokes and two heart attacks. His surgeries include heart bypass, knee replacement and cataract, which left him blind in one eye. Parker gulps down 15 pills a day. He has been denied both parole and compassionate release while racking up, by his count, more than $1 million in treatment.

Read the rest of the thoughtfully reported story here.

[THESE DAYS]

Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) told CNN on Wednesday that the "evidence is clear" that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

Rory Mayberry, a former KBR (Halliburton) food manager at Camp Anaconda in Iraq, testified on videotape from Baghdad that the company charged for twice the number of meals it provided, served food beyond its expiration date, and said managers ordered workers to pick bullets and shrapnel out of food shipments that had been damaged by gunfire or bombings and serve it to troops.

[MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY]

My favorite blog name of all time: More Cowbell

[TIME WASTERS]

Ronald Reagan has been voted the "greatest American" in that Discovery Channel/AOL poll, beating out Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and Oprah.

Jerry Seinfeld spoofs his "Seinfeld" character's incarceration by transferring him to "Oz."

[FREEDOM OF SPEECH]

"It's not a pay raise. It's an adjustment so that they're not losing their purchasing power."

Ewww Coli closes city beach

E. Coli has spiked at the Lake Calhoun beach at 32nd Street, reaching a level of 855 on Monday. The EPA thinks any reading over 235 is nasty, so this seems a particularly proud accomplishment. All this info comes from the Minneapolis Park and Rec board web site, and it appears as though other Minneapolis beaches and lakes are less foul for now.

Last week, President Bush nominated attorney Granta Nakayama to head the enforcement division of the Environmental Protection Agency. It was hardly a shock to learn that Nakayama's legal practice included defending companies accused of violating state and federal environmental law.

But for some long-time residents of Northeast Minneapolis, there is an especially bitter irony in the selection. For the past decade, Nakayama served as a partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Among the firm's more notorious clients: W.R. Grace, the company responsible for much of the extensive asbestos contamination in Northeast. (One of the properties damaged by the "free" waste rock from Grace plant, the now-closed Gluek Park, has been in the news quite a bit lately).

Bush's pick for the new EPA watchdog is probably even less popular in the tiny town of Libby, Montana than Minneapolis. For decades, Grace operated a vermiculite mine in Libby. The vermiculite, some of which eventually found its way to Minneapolis, was tainted with asbestos--a fact concealed by top Grace executives for decades. In February, the company and seven current and former officers were indicted in federal court on criminal charges of knowingly exposing people to the deadly mineral. In Libby, that exposure is believed to have caused more than a thousand illnesses and at least 192 deaths.

Nakayama's defenders point out that he did not work directly on the Grace case and, additionally, that Kirkland & Ellis was not involved in representing Grace against any criminal charges. That's true. All Kirkland & Ellis did was petition for Chapter 11 protection so that people poisoned by Grace won't be able to sue.

But rejoice not: Cities in the Dakotas and Wisconsin rate higher

Forbes.com has compiled an exhaustive list of the best metro areas for businesses or careers. The math that goes into it--cost of living, cost of doing business, income growth--is predictably corporate-minded, but offers an interesting glimspe of the twin towns anyway. For the 3.1 million of us living in the 18th-ranked Minneapolis-St. Paul area, it might come as no surprise that we're 14th in "educational attainment" or 15th in "culture and leisure," but that we rate only 111th--that housing bubble again?--in "cost of living."

What's more surprising is that we're not necessarily the Star of the North anymore. One could argue that distinction might still reside in the state, however, with good old Rochester coming in at number 2 among "best smaller metros." But first-ranked Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Fargo and even the dreaded Bismarck make that particularly depressing top ten.

(Click here to see where Duluth and St. Cloud rank; and here to see which Minnesotans make the Forbes rich list.)

More insult to injury? The cheeseheads in Madison really can claim some bragging rights, coming in 10th overall. More than that, lowly and sad Des Moines isn't far behind at 28.

So perhaps we're not so exceptional after all. But yet things could be worse. The only solace we can take here in the land of the loons is a not-very-startling revelation: To live and work in Milwaukee, coming in at 86, sucks big donkey balls.

Antiwar protesters turn up at Massachusetts military funeral. Wait, did I say "antiwar?" I meant "antiGAY."

It takes a special variety of derangement--a rich senselessness--to capture the human spirit in its contemporary state. Raw misery and rank awfulness are the rule of the hour; this isn't news.

 

Which takes us to the very special case of the right Rev. Fred Phelps, who took his anti-sodomite sideshow on the road this week to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Joined by parishioners from his Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, Phelps has made a cottage industry out of picketing the funerals of gay men who are, by his reckoning, steeped in sin. Massachusetts is a special destination for the Baptists--the next best thing to being in Gomorrah itself--standing as the only state in the Union where gay marriage is legal.

 

So it was that Monday found Phelps in the little town of Marblehead for the funeral of Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Piper. The Green Beret was killed by a roadside explosive on June 3 while riding in a Humvee in Afghanistan. He was 43 years old.

 

Fourteen protesters set up on a corner near the town's Congregational Church. Doing their best to ignore them were more than 1,000 souls who turned out for Sgt. Piper's funeral.

 

It's worth noting, by way of tangent, that when Phelps's godly army was in Minnesota a few weeks ago, this newspaper made the easy decision to totally ignore his media stunt. The Baptists were then picketing the Eden Prairie High School graduation, having smelled the brimstone wafting from that school's Diversity Fair and its Gay-Straight Alliance.

 

One suspects that Rev. Phelps is growing tired of being ignored, which brings us back to Marblehead and the military funeral. I've come to understand, if not accept, that about half the nation detests gay people and abhors their sexual freedom. Americans will enthusiastically pass special referenda to limit the rights of gays and lesbians to live and work as they choose. We can be outraged by this agenda, but we can't even pretend to be surprised.

 

But who would have the inspiration--who would hear the divine calling--to protest against homosexuality at the funeral of a soldier like Sgt. Piper who was not gay? I, for one, find this to be an extraordinary testament to the human spirit.

 

Shirley Phelps-Roper, a lawyer for the Westboro church and Fred Phelps' daughter, explained to a Los Angeles Times reporter: "We are protesting the sins of this nation. That doesn't exclude him." (The church subsequently commemorated the glorious day with a rhymed verse of some 23 stanzas, which I flat out cannot bring myself to link to.)

 

Inspired by these superpatriots and American martyrs, I will be protesting corporate governance and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act at the 2005 Minnesota Donkey and Mule Club State Show in Blue Earth, Minnesota. Please join me there July 29 and 30.