MN Progressive Project has some solid new posts online.

The homepage link:

http://mnprogressiveproject.com/

Sibel Edmonds, "The Needed Ingredients For A Real Alternative Information Gateway."

This link. Read it. Check out some of her links.

Chemical weapons in Syria.

This link. Here. Angry Arab had those links, also this and this. John McCain is at a loss for what to say, since Syria has one more syllable than Iran. So, let him say "Thank God," and he then can exit, stage right. Sibel Edmonds, who, like me was not there to know for certain what may have happened, when. Does any reader have a link to supply to possible Colin Powell speeches about chemical weapons trailers in Syria?

___________UPDATE____________
MN Progressive Project, here.

__________FURTHER UPDATE____________
Woo woo. A Coalition of the Willing. Hat tip to J.O'C.

__________FURTHER UPDATE____________
Hostage taking? By them Rooskies? Ms. Power flexing her muscles?

Get real. How many times has the US blocked resolutions on Israel? In the days of neocon Bolton, before, and afterwards. But that is a horse of a different color?

Again, get real.

__________FURTHER UPDATE____________
Syria has become a hot petition-the-pres topic, here.

As usual there, on a topic with high consensus in a direction the Obama administration does not like or want to consider, somebody seeds the site with multiple petition versions, thereby diluting the appearance of a decisively strong consensus.

Will there be an apartment glut in Minnesota's metro region?

Strib reporting, this excerpt:

Apartments dominate construction in Twin Cities in August
Article by: JIM BUCHTA , Updated: August 30, 2013

Demand for luxury rental apartments is rising, even as houses also are being built.

During August, metro area homebuilders were issued 494 permits to build 1,114 units, according to data compiled by the Keystone Report for the Builders Association of the Twin Cities. That’s a 28 percent increase in permits, and a 24 percent increase in units, over the same month last year.

Multifamily housing, mostly luxury rental apartments, represented more than half of all new units planned for the coming months, [...] Apartment developers are busier than they’ve been in years. Year-to-date multifamily construction is ahead of last year by 17 percent, with permits issued to build 2,761 units.

“We’re leasing on-schedule,” said Susan Picotte, director of real estate for Greystar, an Atlanta-based housing developer that just opened its first new project in the Uptown neighborhood of south Minneapolis.

She said demand is still strong even though thousands of new units already have hit the market, and that has enabled Greystar to increase rents anywhere from 4.9 to 10 percent. Greystar owns and manages seven properties in Minnesota, including the new Elan Uptown, which is being opened in two phases.

“I can look out off the rooftop and see three other projects under construction within a stone’s throw; it’s become a highly competitive market,” Picotte said.

The Uptown and North Loop neighborhoods in Minneapolis have been the epicenters of apartment construction in the city. [...] Across the seven-county metro, the average vacancy rate dipped to 2.3 percent at the end of June, causing the average metro rent price to increase 3 percent to $979, according to a recent second-quarter survey by Marquette Advisors. That was the largest quarterly decline in vacancy rates in two years, and the ninth consecutive quarter of vacancy rates below 3 percent.

A key indicator of future construction also released Friday suggested strong demand for at least the next few months. The Architecture Billings Index for July increased more than a full point, indicating that design activity is on the rise across the country. Chief economist Kermit Baker of the American Institute of Architects said the Billings Index helps forecast what will get built over the next nine to 12 months.

The sentence for which I would have appreciated a numerical data breakdown was, "The Uptown and North Loop neighborhoods in Minneapolis have been the epicenters of apartment construction in the city." That is not Ramsey Town Center, but "in the city" begs the question of numbers in that "epicenter" vs outlying "market rate" rentals, with that "market rate" terminology being favored by Flaherty & Collins.

Presumably "market rate" means "as high as the market will bear for our stuff, where we've built it."

Hopefully Flaherty's Town Center thing rents out to low vacancy at high prices, so that the adventure repays risk money the prior council voted for as a subsidy for Flaherty's firm's activities in Town Center.

The free parking stalls given Flaherty, and that risk capital have become sunk investment, so that the hope is that City of Ramsey recoups the risk capital part of things. Free parking, it's been built from public funds, and given away, and is gone into private hands, those of Flaherty, and of Collins. Any rationalization that it was not Ramsey property tax revenues spent in giving Flaherty free parking would ignore that public money comes from taxing, at one government level or another. It is not grown on trees. It is extracted. Hence, a responsibility attaches to spending it wisely. What's wise for Flaherty might not be wise for Ben Dover.

____________UPDATE___________
Beyond consideration of a possible apartment glut, the notion of a rental property glut can also include single family homes bought by speculators, with the intention of big buck profits from renting the homes to people not favoring living in shared-wall situations. See, e.g., this Strib link.

If Developers are Crabgrass, mega-landlords are Roundup-resistant weeds.

At least that is a truth to some people, although opinions can differ.

Silk purses and sows ears.

Watchdog, second item, here. A quote:

ANOKA-HENNEPIN TEST RESULTS

Speaking of test results, Another batch of standardized test results have come in for school districts, including Anoka-Hennepin.

The big news is that grade 3 through 8 reading scores for this year are based on a new, more vigorous test based on the Common Core, a new national curriculum.

Education officials have dismissed the major drop off [sic] in test scores as simply the result of basing scores on a harder test.

[...] It's not hard to leap over low bar[sic]. Unfortunately, global economic competition doesn't award a "tallest midget" ribbon. You educate your citizens to compete or you fail. It's that harsh, no matter how hard the liberals protest life's unfairness, all the way from the classroom to the athletic field to the boardroom.

There is no two class system in the global arena, no class "A" system to drop to if "AA" is too hard.

[... omitted data; begin pedantic panic mode]

Every single grade level in the district saw a double-digit drop in proficiency. So why hasn't the mainstream media asked why the previous test was so easy? Why was the bar set so low?

Every percentage point drop represents students previously labeled "proficient" in reading who are now below the proficiency line.

[...] The dumbing down of America has certainly touched every school district in Anoka County.

We're also relieved to discuss something other than homosexual issues in the district.

There's much to do [sic] to make these schools truly competitive in a global economy.

The first thing would be to get rid of a teachers' union that protects the incompetent and resists attempts to make teachers more accountable for the results they deliver.

[...] It's great to see improvement vis-a-vis other Minnesota districts, but that's still a tallest midget analysis.

[...] It's one thing to beat the scores out of Brown County. It's another to beat the scores out of Bavaria.

We can't be satisfied doing well against intra-state districts. We need to strive for excellence as measured against international competition, where we are still woefully weak.

By international standards, American kids are middle of the pack in reading and science while they are below average in math.

When Polish kids are smoking U.S. kids on reading scores, it's hard to brag.

It is dog-easy. Blame the teachers. Blame "the liberals." Perhaps the wrong people, dumber ones, are reproducing in greater numbers. Michele and Marcus Bachmann had five children, and are religious fundamentalists vs. being attuned to evolution and global warming worry. But one example does not prove much. Perhaps it is that dumber people move to the Anoka Hennepin district. Perhaps it is time to throw out the TV, and take back the iPhones. Perhaps Korean and Bavarian young people do their text messaging in complete, grammatically correct sentences.

Perhaps it is time to realize that parents have a great impact upon value systems of their children and if the parents are disrespectful of intelligent well-educated neighbors then expecting the children to value education and to work at it is - what - whimsical?

Perhaps the Watchdog is making too much "to do" about a situation where winnowing at higher levels than K-12 is the reality. Perhaps the Watchdog knows all this, but just has dog-stupid bias against unions and liberals. The world is full of possibilities.

But the genetics of things, children inheriting their parents' genetic character, and not their teachers', needs to be a part of proper analysis and behavior, in the training of one's watchdog.

Teaching the dog what to watch for and to bark about (such as ending sentence fragments with prepositions). If you start with a watchdog that can only see from its right eye, having only a right oriented world view, perhaps it's a doomed beast. One doomed to be drawn to the inflaming of passions via stale rhetoric, more than by logic.

Anoka County - Strib posts about Running Acres, and surprisingly, the Watchdog goes on point.

Why do you suppose that is? This link. This screen capture.



Link to the Watchdog site, to follow its link over to the Strib report. Read the Strib item, and then post a comment of what YOU believe put the pup on point.

You lack a boat? Then buy a boat. "The minimum bid will be $2 million for the Sahara, which is offered 'as-is, where-is, without warranty of any kind.' "

This link. With a helicopter landing pad, it's well fitted. So is it more boat than you can crew?

An all out declaration of war. On and on the war depletes our resources and our will. Blame Nixon. And - he was a crook, and a liar too about his crookedness ...

Settle PI, here.

"America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse: In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive," Nixon declared in 1971.

Two years later, as Watergate closed in, Tricky Dick declared "all-out global war on the drug menace" and created the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The U.S. government has been fighting the "War on Drugs" for 42 years, longer than the "Thirty Years War" that ravaged Europe in the 17th century. What is there to show for it? Ruined lives, full jails and cash to the drug cartels.

"The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world," the Global Commission on Drug Policy wrote 17 months ago. The panel included ex-Secretary of State George Shultz, Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson and ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

"Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to curtail supply or consumption," the panel added.

What a war.

In the United States, approximately 700,000 marijuana-related arrests are made every year. The vast majority -- just under 90 percent -- involve nothing more than mere possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Our jails hold an estimated 100,000 Americans charged with one or another marijuana offense. The direct expenditures of the "war:" $10-15 billion a year.

Yet 100 million Americans -- including Barack Obama, part of a dope-smoking "Choom Gang" in high school -- have smoked the forbidden weed.

The march of folly has not yet ended.

Big time news. The march of folly will never end. Fighting folly is like fighting stupidity (see the lead image atop the right-hand sidebar). Folly wins. Stupidity wins. (But less so, in Seattle.)

Read the entire online report.*

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* As a bonus, the story leads with a most memorable photo. So what more could you ask?

RAMSEY - Is the Flaherty rental as crowded as the commuter rail platform?

This Strib photo. This accompanying report. Flatherty's thing in the pic background, with its big rent-now banner atop the thing.

Is Ramsey's payment schedule from Flaherty being met? Can any reader knowing the answer post it, in a comment?

Strib's report stated:

Some of the most notable recent developments on the railway to Minneapolis are in Fridley, Big Lake, Elk River and Ramsey, where the newest $13 million station opened last November.

The Ramsey station is connected to a 230-unit upscale apartment complex that is more than half open. Residents can walk under cover through an attached parking ramp and skyway to the station in the city’s developing downtown, nicknamed COR.

Also under construction is a 50-townhome affordable housing project about half a mile north of the station, said Tim Gladhill, development services manager for Ramsey.

Dave and Donna Heinrich are among about 30 tenants who have leased apartments in Residence at the COR. The empty-nesters decided to jettison snow shoveling and mowing as they downsized from a four-bedroom home in Ramsey. Their one-bedroom apartment is close to their church and Donna’s job. And by rail, they can conveniently travel to Twins games at Target Field, the airport and the Mall of America, Heinrich said. He said the apartment managers gave them a $50 credit on a Go Card to ride the Northstar.

“We thought we can hop the train and go downtown. My wife wants to go to Ikea and the Mall of America,” said Heinrich, 59, who has retired from his Realtor’s job. He said he plans to ride the train to the Fridley station, not far from Redeemer Church, where he has a part-time internship while pursuing a master’s degree.

The Northstar plays a significant role in city development, especially the two new housing projects, said Ramsey Mayor Sarah Strommen. “Having a transportion option for people who are commuting is really important.”

A transportation option for both those kids on the platform.

There are the many, many we have to thank for Ramsey Town Center having turned out as it is. Half-full, the Strib report says, about the Flaherty thing. And there's the Heinrich Maneuver, to rent from Flaherty, to get to Church, to shop Mall of America, to avoid choking. Keep it in mind.

Crabgrass, growing, prospering in Wayzata.

Strib reports on the unfortunate infestation on Wayzata's "nice little town" lawn of life.

And wouldn't you know, usual problems, usual suspects:

That’s one of the big questions left to answer: the price tag. As the city continues to get feedback on the design concept, the third phase of the project will break it down into individual projects and determine cost estimates and funding. The design concept will also be presented to other lake cities and agencies such as Hennepin County.

“This is where the rubber meets the road,” City Manager Heidi Nelson told the City Council last month. “This is where all the work we’ve been doing … starts to come to life.”

"Rubber meets the road," the City Manager said. Some deserve tire tracks across the forehead for past sins, in places other than Wayzata. Rubber meeting the forehead. Waking up memories.

You want more?

The city has compiled more than 600 ideas from residents, businesses and community members since launching its ambitious 10-year lakefront improvement plan last September — part of the city’s goal to remake itself as a Twin Cities year-round destination and boost development.

On Tuesday, the project unveiled a fourth concept design to the City Council based off feedback from three concept designs drawn up last month. That fourth plan will also be presented this weekend at the annual James J. Hill Days.

“What Wayzata has said to us is, we’re a lakefront community and we haven’t really built ourselves to do that. … This is a plan that helps them do that,” said Patrick Seeb, executive director of the St. Paul Riverfront Corporation, which is facilitating the project, the Wayzata Lake Effect.

Over the last year, community members have suggested the city revitalize its lakefront with everything from a band shell to beach yoga, a microbrewery, more docks and even food barges like popular food trucks. Others suggested building a floating island for a lake concert stage or creating a city icon such as a fountain.

[...] But keeping the small town feel of the 4,000-resident suburb is also something “we keep … in mind always,” he said. “We’re not looking to turn it into a metropolitan.”

Not everyone is keen, though, on broad changes.

"Amen," shouted the choir back at the preacher who'd said sin hurts, and is as awful as Crabgrass.

“We need to do things to bring people to Wayzata,” said [resident Terri] Huml, who also owns Gianni’s Steakhouse. “Why can’t Wayzata be like a little Aspen or a little Vail Village and there’s activities year-round?”

One of the worse things about sin is some think it attractive, and that everyone should look forward to doing it.

"Your next car's suspension could generate electricity"

This link. I want a car that can cook chocolate mousse, or Belgian waffles. On its own while it is driving itself down the roade [it will not text, it will not be all the time hanging like a brain-dead geek on the telephone - instead it will be a smart car]. Probably that means waiting a few more years.

And, have you noticed dumb folks with smart phones? Apple cultists, nine times out of ten.

The tenth time, some guy who runs a services firm working the trade while driving. Or a real estate agent.

Bones.

This link.