The Deets

Pushing in the window AC? Not the most discrete burglar.

100 blk 15th Av NE: Suspect entered home by pushing in AC unit, victim fled home; witnesses observed suspect, chased him; suspect fled down the street to bar with victim’s loss; suspect fled bar to another home, crawled into attic to hide behind insulation; Fire Dept responded with ladder; officers used taser to apprehend suspect: Arrested/BURGLARY

Brian Lambert has an interesting story about a guy that used to work on local Arts coverage who was transfered into covering suburban city council meetings at the Pioneer Press before finally taking a buy-out.

Unlike some suburban reporters Peiken says he actually drove around his area looking for something other than just cops and schools material. (Despite the urgency of their focus on the suburbs neither the Star Tribune or the Pioneer Press has anything resembling a bureau in any suburb. Suburban reporters mostly cover their beat by phone from their desks downtown.)

It didn’t work out so well for Peiken.

While I’m a city guy, I spend quite a few nights a year in Stillwater so get more than a few chances to read the Washington County edition (or whatever they call it) of the Pioneer Press and have to say that’s it’s pretty darn thin on content. If they don’t actually staff any reporters in the ‘burbs, I can understand why this would happen.

In Stillwater’s case, they have at least two city newspapers that do what the Pioneer Press is in no way capable of doing with their current staffing: put lots of names and pictures of local residents in the paper.

Maybe the Twin Cities dailies only have to provide a nod to suburban content to differentiate themselves from each other in a given market? What is the minimal amount of coverage needed to create the illusion of local coverage?

In a story WCCO’s Bill Hudson did on a gondola (the water kind) service, the gondolier mentions having a 100% success record on engagements from proposals (over 100 of them) aboard the boat:

There’s a special beauty on the river near Stillwater, Minn. that’s best seen by boat. It’s a place where some boats make it even more special because the vessels themselves are so lovely and rare.

Frankly, I’ve never heard of a gondola service in Stillwater. Luckily, that didn’t stop me from closing the deal with Carly.

The gondola service is called Gondola Romantica, so they have a name to live up to.

The Zillow Blog points out that homes are more expensive in blue states than red, reinforcing the fact that educated people prefer living near each other:

According to Zillow’s Zindex (median Zestimate or the middle estimated home value), the Red states (pro-Bush) have substantially lower home values than do Blue states (pro-Kerry). Red states had a Zindex of $190,323 vs. a Zindex of $323,952 for the Blue states as of the first quarter of 2007 (see Table 1 for details by state). In other words, while Red states were on the winning side of the election, the Blue states are on the winning side in terms of real estate values, and by a substantial amount.

But does this apply at the state level?

I found this chart of median home prices by county for the state of Minnesota State Demographer’s site:

Would it be unfair to generalize by saying that smart people who make a lot of money tend to live in blue states?

Slate has an interesting video from MediaCurves.com that tracks the real-time opinions of people watching the trailer to SICKO. The group is broken down into democrats, republicans and independents. While there are some differences in opinion, all three groups seemed to shy away from the Guantanamo Bay scenes from the movie:

MediaCurves has other videos like this on their site covering many issues. And it looks like you can sign up to be a panelist if you’re into that sort of thing.

Athlinks.com is a social networking site for endurance athletes.

Basically, it’s a registry of race results where you can claim your own race results and track them over time. Then you can “friend” your fellow racing friends to make it easy to track each other’s performance.

If you do races, you’re in the system whether you claim your results or not. For example, here’s what they have on Carly.

I claimed myself, and have a whopping 2 races in their system (my most recent TC & Grandma’s Marathon), but I’m retired.

My brother Dan was the guest or an hour on the At Issue with Ben Merens show on Wisconsin Public Radio yesterday talking about the environment (the archive can be found here and here is a direct like to the RealPlayer version, which may or may not work.).

Dan is the director of Wisconsin Environment, a group that works on creating policies that improve the health of our water and air. Right now, they’re raising attention about HR 969 in the US House of Representatives: a bill that would require public utilities to acquire 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from 1% in 2010.

Amends the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to prescribe requirements for a Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard for calendar years 2010 through 2039. Specifies a schedule of graduated annual percentages of a supplier’s base amount that shall be generated from renewable energy resources, from 1% in 2010 up to 20 % in 2020 and thereafter.

In Minnesota, Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, and Colin Peterson are co-sponsors of the bill. More on this legislation can be found here.

Alex at Twin Cities Breakfast Club breaks down his top-5 breakfast spots with:

1. Barbette
2. Town Talk
3. Maria’s Cafe
4. Day by Day Cafe
5. A Baker’s Wife

Seems like a solid list to me. Personally, I’d find a way to get Birchwood Cafe into the mix, and I’d be willing to bump Day by Day or A Baker’s Wife to make it happen. Day by Day is top-10 but not top-5 material. I’d put a Blue Plate restaurant in the top-5 as well. Probably the Longfellow Grill based on their breakfast burrito.

Anyone up for breakfast tomorrow?

The Brackett Rocket is Back!, originally uploaded by edkohler.

It’a official. The Brackett Rocket has returned to Brackett Park. For those not familiar with Brackett Park, it’s on 28th St E in South Minneapolis a few blocks West of the Mississippi.

It’s been gone for years after being replaced by a more child safe playground fixture.

Previously, kids could climb up inside the steel barred structure. One of my brother-in-law’s head was stuck between the bars as a child in the ’80’s.

Now it’s on a pedestal that puts it around 6 feet off the ground and banks at and angle.

Will this be a draw? Probably not to the same degree as a rocket kids could explore and potentially hurt themselves on.

Once again, Brackett Park can be referred to as “The Park with the Rocket.” Rock on.

Captain Capitalism breaks down his economically minded perspectives on how the left and right approach economic principles.

Here’s what he sees at the principles of the right:

I will work, therefore I shall eat and therefore not rely upon you to take care of me.

And his take on the left, from somewhere to the right of the left:

However, the left finds refuge in the fact that if there’s enough people on the planet and if they work hard enough, then there is a surplus of food and shelter and that some people don’t have to work in order to eat. And the left (and I mean this in the sincerest sense) only has the power it does because it convinces people that “no, you really don’t have to work in order to eat” and promises those weak-minded fools such a scenario.

Playing off of victimhood, conspiracy theories and any other half-baked reason they can find, the left convinces people they were deprived of food, deprived the opportunity to work, and therefore are entitled to eat at others’ expense. And human nature is all too accommodating to this type of thinking because provides them with a benefit with no cost.

Personally, I think this generalization misinformed. I know quite a few people on the left and every single one of them subscribes to the, “I will work, and therefore I shall eat” concept. However, they’re willing to accept that everyone goes through hard times from time to time where they may not be able to find work that supports their family or provides enough health care to live a humane life. People on the left, like me, also tend to believe that people will find better jobs and have better luck supporting themselves if they’re educated, so we think government supported education makes life better for all of us.

Using generalizations on par with Captain Capitalism’s, I suppose people on the right think that people who lose their job should receive no public support. They may lose their healthcare, and they may need some new job skills or interview training in order to find more than a job but a new career, but that would be a waste of public money. If this policy really worked, would homelessness lead to career turnarounds rather than a slide into drug addiction, chronic health issues, and short life spans?

A commenter on Captain Capitalism’s site raised an interesting question for the Captain: How does this explain the idle rich?

The Captain choked on this, responding with:

They had enough people work up enough surplus wealth to carry them through, effectively making them trust fund babies. Inevitably, if they don’t work, they will run out of money. Might last a couple generations, but in the end somebody has to work.

But that’s not the case. If anyone with $10 million or more passed their wealth onto their children and their children’s children, there is absolutely no reason why their families would EVER have to work again as long as they don’t have HUGE families. All they would have to do is live off the interest of their inheritance at an amount that’s less than the difference between interest earned and inflation, creating an infinitely sustainable lifestyle.

I think the Captain would agree that this is not what societies with competitive workforces look like. In fact, that looks a lot more like the work generated by sheiks than that of productive members of society.

I ask the Captain, “Wouldn’t an inheritance tax make America more competitive by forcing the progeny of the wealthy back into the workforce, generating new wealth rather than sucking on their ancestor’s teets their entire lives?”