The Politics of Poverty, Part 3

Yesterday’s State of the Region speech by Met Council head Susan Haigh has received glowing reviews in all of the expected quarters.  As I describe in Part 2 of this series, the government agency in charge of local bus service and the regional water utility has decided to get into the income redistribution business.

Income redistribution?  Yes, it all has something to do with the Met Council’s sideline in housing.

In conjunction with Chair Haigh’s speech, the Council released an 8-page summary of its Fair Housing Equity Assessment report, along with a new draft of the full report.

The assessment paints an ever-bleaker portrait of what the Council terms to be “racially-concentrated areas of poverty” or RCAP.

As I point out in Part 1 of this series, every single one of these areas is, and has been for decades, under the direct control of the state’s most progressive Democrat politicians.  That every liberal policy ever invented has already been implemented in these areas appears to be no deterrent to prescribing more of the same.

This go around, the new twist appears to be the relocation of low-income families within RCAP’s to areas of higher income.  As the Council describes in their report summary (p. 8), they plan,

To promote expanded housing choices for people of all economic means by:

          − preserving existing affordable housing across the region

− encouraging new affordable housing, especially in areas well connected to jobs and transit

− investing in affordable-housing construction and preservation in higher-income areas of the region

− providing competitive rent limits to expand residential choices for holders of Housing Choice Vouchers

− supporting research into Fair Housing issues, discriminatory lending practices, and real estate steering to determine how housing practices may be limiting housing choices

By “investing in affordable-housing construction,” the Met Council means that they will be using your tax dollars to build new public housing in “higher-income areas.”

Simply relocating low-income families to other areas will not, of course, raise the household income of the individual relocated families.  It however, will appear to close income gaps by lowering the average income of higher-income areas and raising the average income of lower-income areas.  RCAP’s will appear to vanish—not because poverty (the “P” in RCAP) is relieved—but because we have dispersed it (the concentration, “C” part).  On paper, the problem appears solved, even if the lives of the low-income families involved have not materially improved.

The Council’s report cites impressive statistics on how many new jobs will be created and how much additional economic activity would be generated by raising the incomes of low income families, rather than closing the gap by mere statistical legerdemain.

The whole exercise seems like begging the question:  showing what success would look like, but not indicating how the Council’s efforts would actually bring it about.

To where will these families be moved?  The Met Council’s draft report (Section 6, Page 5) maps what it calls “Blue Clusters,” areas characterized by good public schools and low crime, among other attributes.  These areas are found throughout the metro region, mostly in 2^nd and 3^rd-tier suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Besides good schools, the distinguishing characteristic of these areas is that they are now—or recently have been—represented by Republicans.  Whether or not moving low income households will succeed in raising their incomes remains to be seen.  What will occur is moving likely Democrat voters from areas of densely concentrated Democrats to political swing areas that now lean Republican.

If the object of this exercise is to elect more Democrats, count me out.  If we are trying to help impoverished areas, here are a few ideas:

·         More school choice

·         Parent trigger options for failing public schools

·         Consolidation of benefit programs into an expanded earned income tax credit

The Politics of Poverty, Part 2

Today in St. Paul, the Chairperson of the Met Council regional government agency delivered a speech from the throne-style address on the State of the Region.  It turns out that the government agency that runs our local bus service has gotten into the income redistribution business.  No, really.

Met Council Chair Susan Haigh delivered her remarks this morning on the campus of the private Macalester College.  It turned out to be a speech on race relations.  She said,

As a country and a region, we have made progress on race relations and equal opportunity.  But it’s not enough.  In fact, our region has some shocking race-based disparities that are the very worst in the nation - worse than Atlanta, Dallas and Washington DC.

I don't know about you, but quite frankly I am embarrassed that our region is at the top of the list of the 25 largest U.S. metropolitan areas with the worst race-based income disparities in the country.

If we want the future I just described for all of our people, we must change.

OK so far, but what does any of this have to do with our region’s water utility?  As I described in Part 1, the Met Council is implementing a bizarre, Federally-mandated plan to relocate low-income households, scattering them across the region.  As Chair Haigh explains,

Poverty by itself really isn’t the only problem.  As you can imagine, people who live in neighborhoods where most of their neighbors are also poor encounter problems that higher income neighborhoods have less of…

…These poor and segregated neighborhoods are what we term ‘racially concentrated areas of poverty.’

The Met Council claims that scattering our low income families will provide benefits for everyone,

Those improvements create nearly $35 billion more in income to be spent in our regional economy for housing, childcare, education, healthcare and consumer goods.

The logical progression escapes me.  It reminds me of the thinking behind South Park’s underpants gnomes, who created the famous formulation,

Phase 1:  Collect Underpants

Phase 2:  ?

Phase 3:  Profit 

The joke being that by diligently and earnestly engaging in an effort, you will produce the desired result:  regardless of how unconnected your efforts are to your goals.

The same goes for the Met Council: Phase 1, scatter low-income families, Phase 2, ?, Phase 3, growing economy.  In the latest draft of the Fair Housing & Equity Assessment (FHEA), the Met Council attempts an explanation,

To the extent that people of color and low-income people cannot live in communities of their choice, they cannot access the specific types of opportunities those communities offer.  Where one lives matters, because one’s place of residence determines one’s position within the regional landscape of opportunity.

The Met Council will be finalizing its fair housing plan over the next year.  It’s an effort worth following as it evolves.

In Part 3, the Met Council reveals their last gasp weapon in the war against poverty: send in the Republicans!

The Shape of the Playing Field, Part 3

If such a thing is possible, I participated in a useful discussion on Twitter last night.  The principal participants included my internet radio partner—St. Paul attorney John Gilmore—Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial page editor Scott Gillespie, and former editor and current Southwest Journal columnist David Brauer.

Prompting our conversation was the apparent decision by the Star Tribune to discontinue the weekly Sunday Opinion page “Contributing Columnist” feature, in which non-liberal voices rotated through about once a month.  The feature included columns from conservative author Katherine Kersten, conservative radio talk show host Jason Lewis, and centrist politicians Tim Penny and Tom Horner.
 

Follow the Money: Up North Edition

This blog post caught my eye today, concerning the financing of Minnesota 8^th District Congressman Rick Nolan’s successful 2012 campaign to return to the seat he last held back in the 1970s.

What jumped out at me was the involvement of the firm Strategic Field Concepts, which –according to filings at the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office—is managed by Corey Day, the Executive Director of Minnesota’s Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party. 

Smart Growth Meets the Road

Now the fun part begins.  For the last many years I have been warning readers about the misguided efforts of Minneapolis and St. Paul to transform their cities from the workaday towns that became the hub of the upper Midwest into…something else:  something where the growth was “smarter” and the new residents more “creative.”  Places that look less like the sprawly, automobile-dependent communities that grew up around them in every direction.

Soulless in Winona

Taxpayer-Funded Film Festival Censors FrackNation

The pro-natural gas movie FrackNation—directed by husband and wife filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney—had a screening cancelled by Winona, Minnesota’s Frozen River Film Festival over the weekend.

The film festival is, of course, funded by your tax dollars.  The festival has received two grants from the Minnesota Legacy Fund.  A grant of $22,000 supported this year's Festival, while a $10,000 grant from the Legacy fund subsidized the 2012 event.  So, it turns out that your tax dollars are going to censor viewpoints they don't agree with.

For 2014, the Festival received a separate $10,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Southeast Minnesota regional Arts Board.

Naturally, the public Winona State University is the festival's other major sponsor.  So much for higher learning.

I had the good fortune to meet Ann at a conference in Minneapolis when the movie was still in the planning stages.  I saw the movie when it was broadcast on Mark Cuban’s AXS TV last year.  It’s a great movie and a wonderful antidote to the anti-industry screed Gasland.  The Festival found room in its 2014 lineup to screen Gasland, Part 2.  FrackNation was meant to be a counterpoint in the programming.

Due Diligence

A front page article in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune reports on the struggles of Minnesota Democrat Governor Mark Dayton to implement MNsure, the local variant of Obamacare (“Republicans lean on MNsure to make case against Dayton”).

The thesis of the piece is that Republicans are hoping to use MNsure’s start-up difficulties against Gov. Dayton in his 2014 re-election bid.  Not to worry: MNsure’s fortunes (along with Dayton’s) are turning around.  The Star Tribune reports,

And there is a chance the political dynamics surrounding MNsure could shift as more people acquire health insurance.

The numbers are already beginning to shift underneath the larger political conversation, and success stories are emerging.

‘I was thrilled with it’

Small business owner Karin Alexander of Maple Grove bought insurance through MNsure.  She went without coverage about a year after the policies she found on the open market proved too expensive.

Like many, Alexander experienced repeated delays as the MNsure website crashed again and again.  Her frustration grew as the deadline loomed and it took more than a week to sign up.

But when she finally got her plan, Alexander said, “it was cheaper insurance and better coverage. I was thrilled with it.”

That immediately made her loyal to MNsure and to the man whom she credits with ushering it into existence.

“I think there are lots of people like me who would come to Dayton’s rescue and say, ‘MNsure is a great thing,’ ” Alexander said.

Another satisfied customer.  However, something tells me that Ms. Alexander was loyal to Mark Dayton, even before the October 1, 2013 roll out of MNsure.

The Maple Grove Patch reports that Ms. Alexander served as Campaign Manager for Maple Grove’s Sharon Bahensky, who ran as the Democrat nominee in 2012 for state senate in District 34.  A quick check of records at the Campaign Finance Board reveals that Ms. Alexander donated $500 (the maximum then allowed) to Bahensky’s 2012 campaign.

For the Star Tribune to portray Alexander as a recent convert to Gov. Dayton’s cause is to mislead the reader.

False Flag Operations

Should Minnesota Republicans take advice from an advisor to the state’s top-ranked individual Democrat donor, Alida Messinger?  [In Minnesota, Democrats are known by the initials DFL, Democrat-Farmer-Labor.]

I pondered that question on Friday night, as I was watching Almanac, the local public television public affairs show. 

Culture of Corruption, Part 2

It was a big week for Minnesota’s political culture of corruption.  [See Part 1 here.]

The state’s Legislative Auditor determined that Democrat Governor Mark Dayton broke the law by taking a campaign staffer along for a trip on a state-owned airplane.  Last month, when this story first surfaced, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the Governor’s spokesman, Matt Swenson, said,

It is appropriate for campaign staffers to travel with the governor to campaign events if that travel is paid for by the campaign.

Clearly the Legislative Auditor disagreed.  The same audit turned up yet another disturbing incident involving the Democrat Governor.

Minneapolis aims for Portland, hits Detroit

This week, newly-installed Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges gave a speech at a joint meeting of the Minneapolis and St. Paul chambers of commerce, “Hodges pushes for transit at business breakfast.”

I didn’t attend the meeting and I am relying on the Minneapolis Star Tribune account of her speech.  The Star Tribune reports,

The TakeAction Takeover Extends to Duluth

I have previously written about the election triumphs in Minneapolis and St. Paul of political non-profit TakeAction Minnesota.  TakeAction has posted another win, this time in Duluth.  Last night TakeAction tweeted,
 

	TakeAction Minnesota @TakeActionMN     Congratulations to Patrick Boyle on winning today's special election to fill Steve O'Neil's St. Louis County Commissioner seat in #Duluth!         09:45 PM - 14 Jan 14

The Wisconsin Experiment

Wisconsin Must Fail to Save the Progressive Project

I’ve written before about the left’s obsession with our neighbor to the east.  Progressives appear convinced that if Republican Governor Scott Walker’s tenure in Wisconsin is seen as a success, the larger progressive project will be threatened.  If conservative governance can succeed in a historically-blue state, like Wisconsin, the fear is that it could succeed anywhere.

Does Minnesota have a culture of political corruption?

In Lord Acton’s famous formulation,

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Since January 2013, Minnesota’s Democrats have enjoyed absolute power over the state, holding all four statewide offices and control of both houses of the state legislature.

Light Rail Anger on the Left, Part 2

Report from the Field

Of late, I have been following the struggles of the Southwest Light Rail project, as the regional government Met Council tries to quiet NIMBY opposition to its latest mass transit project, which is meant to take commuters from downtown Minneapolis through the southwestern suburbs.

In Part 1 I focus on the efforts of state Democrats to quell intra-party opposition to the train’s routing, using your tax dollars, of course.

Tonight, the Met Council visited the suburb of St. Louis Park, hoping to quiet critics of a plan to reroute nearby freight trains to accommodate the light rail service.

The Star Tribune declared the locals “skeptical.”  Pat Doyle reports,

A new search for ways to reroute freight train traffic to make room for the Twin Cities’ biggest light-rail line came under fire Thursday night by St. Louis Park residents who opposed earlier plans for moving the freight to their city.

I had hoped to swing by and take in a bit of the meeting, in person, but I couldn’t even get into the packed parking lot.  My man on the scene filed this report from inside the building.

We had between 200 and 300 people in attendance, not counting the hockey game going on elsewhere in the building.

It was an interesting meeting.  This evening’s event was conducted town hall-style, instead of the table talk format used for Tuesday’s Kenwood (Minneapolis) meeting.

St. Louis Park is united that they do not want the reroute.  Quite a few Minneapolis residents also spoke against the reroute and a few even were for the co-location alternative with an elevated or relocated bike trail.  For its part, the Met Council has dismissed that alternative even though it is the least expensive option.

Stay tuned.

Light Rail Anger on the Left

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Pat Doyle uncovers a lot of disturbing facts in his piece “Light-rail meeting stirs anger.”  Now I know what you’re thinking: light rail? anger? the Tea Party strikes again.  Not this time.

Doyle reports on a community meeting in Minneapolis called to discuss the routing of the proposed Southwest Light Rail project, which (if built), will take commuters from downtown Minneapolis through some of the city’s southwestern suburbs.

There is a lot not to like among the facts Doyle packs into the short article that leads the paper’s Metro section this morning.  It’s tough to know where to begin, and the headline on the web version, “Southwest light-rail gripe session stirs some anger,” is as good a place as any.

The “gripe session” meeting was called “to help calm critics” in the wealthy enclave of Kenwood, which—not coincidentally—is the permanent home of Minnesota’s Democrat Governor, Mark Dayton.  (Minnesota’s Democrats style themselves DFL—Democrat-Farmer-Labor.)

The Governor’s former neighbors are apparently whipped up into a good-old-fashioned NIMBY (not in my back yard) frenzy.  To quote Mongo from Blazing Saddles, the dispute has “got to do with where choo-choo go.”

Not near them, seems to be the Kenwood consensus.  Doyle writes of the Governor’s former neighbors,

A common argument of Kenwood residents opposed to plans for running the line through their neighborhood, one of the city’s more affluent, is that it won’t provide enough service to poorer communities.

Of course.  Mass transit is a poverty-relief program, so why would you run trains in areas where rich people could hear or see them?  It makes no sense.

The Kenwood meeting was facilitated by consultant Dan Kramer of the firm Grassroots Solutions.

As Doyle reports,

The decision to pay Grassroots for “facilitating” public meetings grew out of closed-door strategy sessions this fall involving Dayton, a DFLer, Met Council officials and leading DFL legislators in response to opposition to the project.

Notice who is conspicuous by their absence:  Republicans.  Democrats, exclusively, got together—behind closed doors—to figure out what to do about their difficulties in selling their Democrat-developed mass-transit project to Democrat voters living in Democrat neighborhoods.  As Doyle reports,

Some of the most vocal critics are DFL activists in the corridor area, who urged Gov. Mark Dayton to intervene.

Intervene he did.  And the solution?  Use taxpayer funds to hire a public relations firm.  And not just any public relations firm, as Doyle reports about Cramer and his firm,

He’s a former aide to Sen. Paul Wellstone, and the firm works for prominent labor unions and DFL politicians.

Maybe it’s just me, but if Gov. Dayton and his fellow Democrats are having difficulty selling the this light-rail project to the Governor’s wealthy, liberal neighbors, perhaps they should not be using taxpayer money to resolve an intra-party squabble.

Cramer’s firm is being paid $22,000 by the government agency Met Council to facilitate a series of public meetings along the route and judging by the headline, he’s off to a shaky start.  Minnesota boasts a plethora of well-financed, left-leaning advocacy groups who support mass transit.  I’m sure any number of these would be happy to facilitate such meetings for free.

Calibrations

Today, the Minneapolis Star Tribune republished a column by Michael Gerson, a neo-conservative columnist with the Washington Post.  The column’s headline gives away the gist of the piece,

Government, per se, is not the problem: The founders left room for continuing calibration. Republicans must accept this.

Gerson argues that any opposition to the growth of government is not legitimate.  He writes,

The Federalist founders did not view government as a necessary evil.

In 1909, Federal spending accounted for only 2.48 percent of the economy.  One hundred years later, 2009 (Barak Obama’s first year as President), Federal government spending as a share of the economy had soared to 25.17 percent of the overall economy.  In a century, government has literally grown 10 times in size.

Republicans were ok with Federal government spending as 1/25 of the economy (1917).  Republicans were ok with Federal government spending as 1/10 of the economy (1935).  Republicans were ok with Federal government spending as 1/5 of the economy (1975).  But when Federal government spending hit ¼ of the economy, Republicans balked, and for that, they cannot be forgiven.  For Gerson and many others, to question the continued growth of government spending is to question the existence of government itself.

The debate is not whether or not we should have a Federal government, but just how massive a Federal government is sustainable.  As I've discussed before, we are “calibrating” ourselves into oblivion.

The Geography of Politics

In the past few weeks, I’ve been exploring the nexus between geography and politics in Minnesota.  Along the way, I’ve been developing the hypothesis that the safer a seat becomes for a political party, the more radical its holder will be.

In Part 1, I offer the test case of Minnesota House of Representatives District 64B.  This St. Paul district is safely in the hands of Democrats.  With the long-time incumbent retiring, seven candidates have already announced efforts to win the Democrat endorsement for the open seat.  One of the multitude in the running currently serves the communications director for the ultra-liberal political charity TakeAction Minnesota.  2014 will reveal just how far to the left district 64B will shift.

Safe seats like House District 64B abound for the state’s Democrats—who, though perhaps more numerous than Republicans, are concentrated into relatively few districts.  Districts that lean Republican actually outnumber districts that lean toward the Democrats.  Further, the Democrats’ safe seats are concentrated in the core urban areas of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth.

In Part 2, I examine some empirical evidence for my hypothesis, graphing how much further from the political mainstream incumbents move, the safer their seat becomes.

In 2012, the state’s Democrats recaptured control of the Legislature.  They offered voters in swing suburban districts a value proposition around the idea of socially-moderate, “pro-business” Democrats.  In 2013 Democrats delivered to suburban voters a radical-left agenda orchestrated by party leaders in in safe Minneapolis and St. Paul districts.

The “Geography” series originated in an earlier series, one which examines the bizarre plan of the Met Council regional government to reduce poverty in the metro area by spreading the poor more thinly around the 7-county region.  The relocation of urban low-income citizens may not make them less poor, but it does hold out the possibility of flipping marginal suburban Republican seats toward the Democrats.