Grumbles

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3
May 09

Bozeman’s Wall

GO FOR A JAUNT SOUTH on 17th Avenue between Durston and Oak and back north on 15th Avenue from Oak to Durston and you will experience THE WALL. A manufactured home park that used to be on the outskirts of town now abuts a tony new development of single and multi-family Rocky Mountain (read that “Colorado) chic condos and single-family homes. An eight-foot high wooden fence separates the old from the new. Two worlds kept apart. More than likely one hopes to vanquish the other all in good time.

The blue line marks the way of the new wall

The blue line marks the way of the new wall

On the west side of “The Wall” is a teeming community that has been there as long as I can remember. Google Earth shows streets on the east side of the wall but few structures. There are more now, plus two car washes. The new is a work in progress. And it’s actually not a bad development with mixed use and relatively dense concentration.

I don’t know how people on either side of The Wall feel about each other. The newbies are tolerated I expect by the manufactured homes park folk on the west side. The newbies to the east are, I expect, worried about their property values. Neither can do anything about the other. Maybe both are happy The Wall is there. But if it weren’t; what then?

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14
Mar 09

The windows of downtown Bozeman

 

NEARLY ALL of the north side of this block of downtown Bozeman is effected.

NEARLY ALL of the north side of this block of downtown Bozeman is affected.

A WARM SATURDAY AFTERNOON and a stroll through a busy downtown Bozeman. One block, just west of Rouse Ave, nearly isn’t there except for some ruins. Downtown Bozeman is back in business but up and down the street are stores with boarded up fronts and signs saying “open for business.” Some of these buildings are more than a block away from the scene above. Click on the photo to see it in full size,

What is worrying is the fate of the building on the far right. See the detail below. It seems intact but clearly there is fire damage inside. See detail below:

 

BUILDING JUST TO RIGHT of the VFW

BUILDING JUST TO RIGHT of the VFW

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5
Nov 08

The future of Sarah Palin?

IN A GRACIOUS, CLASSY and very heartfelt concession speech last night, John McCain seemed to suggest that his time was over and that Sarah Palin’s had just begun. While it was kind of him to talk up his running mate whose ambitions he knew he had to affirm somehow, I don’t agree with him. I think the opposite is the case. 

I have always known that some day the Republican Party as we know it would bring about its own destruction. Implode in a large cloud of dust like the demolition of the giant Montgomery Wards building in Saint Paul. It was only a matter of the right conditions. That awareness dates to 1995 when a moderate Republican friend of mine in Dubuque, Iowa, said to me: “I want my Party back.” What she meant, of course, is that she had been marginalized by extreme, doctrinaire, right wing religious fanatics who had taken full control of the Dubuque County Republican Party apparatus. They became a party of only a few very narrow issues. Of course, fiscal responsibility wasn’t one of them. This phenomenon occurred in Iowa before most other places in the United States. I was starkly aware of it because I was battling the same extremism as a candidate for the local school board. In those days the fanatics imagined they could take control of government by first electing their people to school boards — in Iowa separate elections to which very few people paid attention. Once elected to the school board their people could matriculate upward to higher office — city council, state legislature, Congress and, well, who knows.

Sarah Palin - the future of the Republican Party?

Sarah Palin - the future of the Republican Party?

IT WAS A CHILLING notion but one we in Iowa quickly discovered was a largely overblown concern. Yes they could quietly get some of their folks elected by mobilizing church members through “stealth” campaigns. We would wake up one morning and find ourselves represented by people who didn’t believe in public education. People who were home schooling their kids. In Dubuque, where two of seven school board members were of this ilk, they would take the reins of power over a $60 million a year enterprise. In other Iowa cities, Davenport, and I can’t remember where else, the products of this sinister strategy were popping up. Continue reading →

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10
Feb 08

Obama wins more caucuses

Caucuses are a great way to disenfranchise people.  They are chaotic and complicated, managed in the most rudimentary way and look nothing like an orderly and procedure driven election. Continue reading →

Grumbles — 1 Comment
13
Jan 08

Not nice in Minnesota

The antithesis of Minnesota Nice

Continue reading →

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26
Aug 07

Finally, the truth regarding Karl Rove’s departure

This Modern World 

At last, an insightful American cartoonist GETS the real reason for Karl Rove’s resignation from the Bush Administration effective the end of this month. Click here or on image to see scalable version. To see the This Modern World archive, click here.

Grumbles / I-35W Bridge — 1 Comment
17
Aug 07

Congratulations Gov. Pawlenty

Hearty congratulations go to the governor of Minnesota this week. Results are in. His approval ratings are UP. Gov. Pawlenty is poised to rise even further as the darling of Bush-era Republikans. What an accomplishment. For years our governor has been underfunding the highway department which has responded for years by steadily lowering its expectations for road and bridge maintenance. In the paper today a legislator reports hearing from highway officials quietly voicing their deep concern for this practice. Most recently, Gov. Pawlenty vetoes a 5 cent gasoline tax riduculing the very idea of it and rejecting DFL efforts to include bridge inspections. What one may consider is the inevitable happening in this post-industrial Republikan controlled era of “government” and a very big, important, bridge comes tumbling down. Now we see the governor on TV looking very concerned and wanting to salve the pain of those awaiting word on loved ones among the disappeared. And the people of Minnesota EAT IT UP. New approval ratings through the roof! What kind of idiots have we become?

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10
Aug 07

Drought – Minnesota Style

Back in the day … our kids were babies … we had a drought, the railroad was laying off people and the local economy in Havre, Montana, was not good. The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) owned 600 houses and was selling them cheap. Property values were dropping fast. Businesses were retrenching and folks were selling out and leaving town. That’s how I remember what a drought looks like. At least up in Montana.

In Minnesota, here in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, we are some distance from the agricultural economy. We know from lawns and gardens. I have very little of the former. A lot more of the latter. And we have a lot of trees on our property. The sun rises and gives us a cloudless day every day. The temperature rises to the 90s and then cools off in the evening. It is beginning to feel like Havre, Montana.

What doesn’t get watered, dies.  Continue reading →

Grumbles / I-35W Bridge — 1 Comment
10
Aug 07

I-35W comes to the Midway

The hegemony of motorized travel knows no bounds. Sever one of its vital lifelines and it moves blithely to an alternative. Block the alternative and the alternative to the alternative is found. Does anyone ever imagine the possibility that maybe the trip didn’t have to occur in the first place?  Continue reading →

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4
Aug 07

Republican bankruptcy

The standard Republican game plan is definitely fraying around the edges. For the national government, endless war, no end to earmarks, tax cuts, no new taxes, and no government investment in the country and people that pay for it. A modified version has been working very well in Minnesota as well. Gov. Pawlenty made “the pledge.” No new taxes. And gleefully vetoed the first gasoline tax increase since the 1980s. That same bill included stepped up bridge inspections. Every time the DFL controlled legislature has offered any legislation that includes government investment in the work of government, Pawlenty had his veto pen at the ready.   Continue reading →

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