Pages

Monday, June 14, 2010

Matt Look appears to be campaigning for County Board on Facebook. I wonder if the Gestapo are watching?

Tammy Sakry a little less than a month ago reported about a parkland property situation where decades ago the county in setting up parkland in Ramsey's northeast corner along the Rum allowed a resident to retain a parcel of property from an estate the bulk of which, the raw land, was being taken by eminent domain for park purposes. In reporting of past allowing of grace, the concession of not taking home and five acres at the time, the Sakry reporting did not indicate whether only a life estate was contemplated, or whether any strings were attached to exempting the land or any undocumented promises or expectations were exchanged back then. At any rate it looks as if the County and Met Council are playing Alphonse and Gaston as to fronting the cash to buy the property, each holding back for now.

However, whether it is designated as park property or not; if put up for sale, then to avoid misrepresentation fault and liability there would have to be disclosure of the uncertain situation with the park and all, (whether a redesignation happens in Ramsey's comp plan or not), there is that hanging cloud where it would border on fraud by omission to fail to disclose detail of it to any and all potential purchasers. So the owner is bound by or at least constrained by the situation one way or another. If the municipality ensures that due disclosure is given, how is that worse than allowing a possibility of an unwitting buyer being caught in a terrible mistake? It seems prudent to not want to see buyers at risk that way. Caveat emptor is not good municipal policy where a cloud hangs clear to current residents, but an outside potential purchaser might less likely have read Sakry's reporting or otherwise was more open to being misled.

That's the underlying situation. All of that is a land dispute. 


It is improper to call it "Classic Met Council Gestapo."





This is the Gestapo.



Gestapo hunted people down, placed citizens universally at risk and in fear, and had no qualms over crossing the threshold of a home, forcing an entry for trumped up puposes or having no purpose beyond random entry to look around. It is as if a municipality used electrical inspections as a trumped up reason to send an official presence across a home threshold to poke around - where it could be done randomly, or worse as intimidation, used retributively against someone speaking up and standing out. (The Japanese have the expression, "The nail that stands out gets hammered down.")

That's nothing to do with a land dispute and two governmental levels wanting to see the other fund a park addition in whole or in major part, but it has a lot to do with how administrative inspections are managed. Cops need probable cause and a warrant to enter a dwelling if they are in general to be within the Fourth Amendment's constraints. Code inspectors can circumvent that safeguard.

It is a troubling thing to have seen, in that context, a televised council meeting where regular bidding processes were sought to be circumvented for someone's crony to be advanced, after bidding had closed, to be the one entering other people's homes.

It did not sit well with me at all, and it should be troubling to all civil libertarians. If protecting the inside of one's home is not a "property right" it is hard to think the curtilage somehow is more sacred or important, such as amounts of wetland buffers, etc.

It seems some people see no inconsistency in themselves; so, are they best to represent us, or not?

---------------
This is a photo of Gestapo headquarters.



I look, but I do not see Natalie Steffen, of Met. Council, anywhere in the picture, but what is Look really aiming at other than Steffen?

Indeed, I see Steffen here. And no eagle.

Where I see an eagle prominently displayed, (along with federal flags where printing local political yard and highway signs and a range of political stuff is not a federal task), is here, bannered and later:


Also, I cannot envision Natalie running with the Doberman dogs, hunting dissent; and while I often have called Met Council "Big Sumo," and suggested they are serving developer interest at the cost of average citizen concerns, that is a policy position apart from suggesting any "Gestapo" dimension to the operation or people within it.

Am I overreacting? Am I wrong being honked off about people who badge themselves up with patriotic symbolism in ways that indirectly suggest if you disagree with them you somehow might be less a patriot, even unpatriotic?

Do you think Natalie reads campaign rhetoric such as here, in Facebook?

Should she?