SCENE. Mitch BERG is leaving a small cafe. Avery LIBRELLE is walking in. BERG is too tired to care and doesn’t try to evade or escape the encounter.
LIBRELLE: Mer…
BERG: Cut to the f***ing chase, Avery.
LIBRELLE: In “One MInnesota! (TM) “, we are all prospering in a future where we boldly stride forward together.
BERG: Can I have some blue cheese dressing for that word salad?
LIBRELLE: You just hate progress.
BERG: Nah. I hate decay and decline. Here’s an example. The entire Grand Palace center, which used to be the heart of a vibrant neighborhood back before “vibrant” meant “graffiti and panhandlers”, is empty with demise of the Pottery barn.
LIBRELLE: And you’re blaming the DFL?
BERG: Who else has defined the business climate in Saint Paul?
LIBRELLE: The wider state economy, duh.
BERG: Which, according to Governors Flanagan and Klinki, is…
LIBRELLE: Going gangbusters for One MInnesota! (TM)
BERG: So Saint Paul’s main commercial strip is languishing because the state’s economy is…too good?
LIBRELLE: Yes. It’s the GOP’s fault.
BERG: A party that has no power in Saint Paul is responsible for a business climate that isn’t really failing…?
LIBRELLE: Yes. That’s why.
BERG: Huh. Maybe if Saint Paul were to identify as a prosperous city, that’ll help.
LIBRELLE: Oh! The city does identify as a prosperous city! And if. you disagree, you’re a MAGA white supremacist1
BERG: Oh, clearly.
And SCENE
Cut to the f***ing chase, Avery.
That made me laugh out loud.
As to the rest, yeah, well, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
I remember Selby-Dale in the 50’s. A mostly Jewish neighborhood with a lot of DP’s (Displaced Persons) from Eastern Europe. You could stand on the corner and hear ten languages in ten minutes.
In the late 50’s and early 60’s, the Jews moved to Highland Park, and repeating a well-trod path, immigrant blacks from the Chicago, Saint Louis and the south moved in. Due in part to red-lining, which was a real thing, a lot of ethnic cleansing of white people took place, but that is all for another day.
My old man sold the family home for a loss when a charitable religious organization moved in a crime family across the street and bullet holes began to appear in our siding on a regular basis.
Grand Avenue was headed for the same hell when the city fathers (remember fathers running cities?) had a flash of brilliance, they removed all zoning requirements along the avenue and allowed businesses of any type to appear.
The street took off in the late 60’s and 70’s. By the 80’s, it became a hot-spot and thrived through the 90’s.
In 2014, the last time I was there, some assh*le, broke into my car and stole a camera and laptop. I had covered them up with my coat – but he just wanted the coat – to stay warm of course.
I never went back.
Now I live in a place where few people lock their doors – but maybe they should.
All those holding out for student loan forgiveness now have something else to hope for. Can “unfair” SUV lease payments be next?
Because St. Paul is such a well run city with no problems, Carter is proposing to wipe out medical debt to the tune of …. nuts can’t remember. I know one of you commentators will have the info at your fingertips. Anyway I do not know if Carter plans to buy the debt at a discount or try to pay it off as is. We do know that only favored groups will be the beneficiaries and that the taxpayers of St. Paul will be paying for this. Carter is outdoing the Daley machine in my opinion.
From the second article:
The nonprofit, fueled by donations, negotiates with hospital systems to purchase eligible medical debt in batches at a steep discount. It then forgives the debt, relieving consumers of the burden to pay.
I’d be curious how steep the discount is. I recall a time in my life when my permanent address was still in MN and I was contracting for a small agricultural company in Des Moines. I was fairly healthy and rolled the dice on not having health insurance and, as luck would have it, I required health care and had to pay out-of-pocket for it. When the clinic learned I was doing self-pay and paying in full at the time of my visit, they deducted 20% from the bill. Apparently, the back-and-forth on negotiating with the insurance companies necessitated the extra cost. And we ultimately have Sen. Teddy “Chappaquiddick” Kennedy to thank for the existence of HMOs: Another sterling example of leftists trying to solve a “problem” by putting their thumb on the scale, only to create larger, newer problems.
Einstein stated the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. A subset would be leftists trying to “help” and being surprised they make things worse. Over and over.
Now that is interesting, Ian. I was recently talking to someone, a small business guy, who carries catastrophic coverage but otherwise pays out of pocket like you. He told me that he gets big discounts on health care for the very same reasons you give.
Another sterling example of leftists trying to solve a “problem” by putting their thumb on the scale, only to create larger, newer problems.
Which then gives them yet another problem to solve by putting their thumb on the scale.
A subset would be leftists trying to “help” and being surprised they make things worse.
I’m cynical enough to think that “being surprised” isn’t really the case, that a lot of this is by design.
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