WCCO reports what can be viewed as over-reaction, today. (The Verboten word going unspoken in reporting.) Readers can decide whether it is a step too far to not write the wording which caused the fan to load up.
Atwater's statement made waves then. Has the pendulum swung too far? I was a ten year old in New Orleans when the Brown school desegregation decision was reached. Attending Lee School, a segregated grade school then named after Robert E. Lee, (since renamed years ago). I recall even at that age finding it curious to have students assembled each morning to recite the Pledge in a room with the flag in a corner, a large portrait of Lee on a facing wall. Times truly are different.
Strib local content, the brain fart that went too far. But then did not in implementation go far enough. The idea coalesced into life coupled to Ramsey Town Center - build that, or start it - and then, Nirvana with commuter rail around the corner. Dumb and Dumber was the name of a movie. I think it was about those in and allied to Met Council with planning degrees, and about hubris. Perhaps I am wrong. I did not view the Jim Carey movie. I viewed dumb and dumber as filmed in Ramsey, Anoka County, MN.
The groundbreaking movie I saw. The sequel. What cannot be seen in the sequel?
People.
Still so. Yet, before folding the hand, rebrand. Just as "Ramsey Town Center" was rebranded to, "The COR."
Give me that old-time rebranding that we all know so well.
_____________UPDATE___________
Don't you love history, for what it teaches? Crabgrass readers, in retrospect, should boost the viewing numbers for those two YouTube "movies." In hindsight, they amuse, if it were not for the taxpayer money wasted.
A Strib report of a 2010 prequel meeting to the groundbreaking, (and to the sequel). That 2010 Strib item, in closing, states -
Meanwhile, officials from Ramsey wonder what it will take to get the
$15 million needed to open a station in their city. "We thought it was a
foregone conclusion that they [the Rail Authority] knew we were looking
for money," Mayor Bob Ramsey said Wednesday.
"What do we need to do to get the county's attention?"
Erhart, one of Northstar's founding
fathers, said he'd love to see stations both in Ramsey and at Foley
Boulevard. County Board Chairman Dennis Berg has been vocal in his
support of Ramsey at board meetings, as have other commissioners.
But Ramsey was not on the Rail Authority's agenda when it voted last week, West said.
The city continues to seek county, state
and federal funding for a proposed station that could give an economic
jolt to the half-vacant Ramsey Town Center project, where trains would
stop.
[italics added]. Can you say, "a rathole?" As in, "Money pissed downa rathole."
Met Council and affiliated planners, per a 2007 Met Council planning and funding meeting document. Warren Buffet's Berkshire firm and others involved in BNSF stock holdings, they can just smile and smile. They own the tracks. They licensed Northstar use of their rail tracks, for millions and millions. (Dollars, not passengers.) People who know have told me that for any project, a continuing or terminating decision rests not on sunk cost, but on future viability, including return on investment. Inadequate return, inadequate future, then pull the plug to cut losses.
A 2013 post-completion "postmortem" tells of low ridership from the start, and it has been bad that way ever since. At page 4 of 7 pages, the report begins a discussion of capital costs.
Gee. Lots of money.
Don't you love planner hubris, and what it teaches?
FURTHER: There is a Ramsey Station opening ribbon-cutting YouTube "movie" online. Same politicians.
FURTHER: Success has many parents. Failure is an orphan. Likely the politicians do not remember the things they said, back then - on film - earlier in our 21st Century. Likely they'd not champion the thing the same way, as back then, when it was a project being sold the public. The Ramsey Station was built with union labor, prevailing wage, so union support peaked then. They were onboard at the start, so to speak. Now the union officials might ask, "What station are you talking about?"
_________FURTHER UPDATE________
POLITICIANS: Sometimes expanding a post adds essential background and linking, other times it makes the post too long for too many readers. If reading this far, politicians said and did things, with a perspective they should not, ever, be allowed to forget or brush under the rug. WCCO online, Nov. 13, 2013:
Starting Nov. 14, they’ll [Ramsey residents] be riding the rails daily, as the long awaited Northstar commuter rail begins service.
[...] It’s the first “planned transit development” along Northstar’s 40-mile route between downtown Minneapolis and Big Lake.
“We’re
not building it for one day and shutting it down,” said Anoka County
Commissioner Matt Look, “we’re building it for the next 50 to 100
years.”
As chairman of Anoka County’s Regional Railroad Authority,
commissioner Look defends the station’s cost. It was originally
budgeted for $13 million to construct, but came in under budget at
around $11 million.
He firmly believes the new stop will feed new riders into the system,
eventually boosting daily ridership by upwards of 25 percent.
A
big reason behind the optimism is the station’s surrounding commerce.
Ramsey’s COR development includes a giant 800-stall covered parking
ramp, 350 stalls of which are dedicated to rail commuters. There is also
a 230-unit apartment complex now under construction and planned to open
in the spring of 2013.
“If we can increase riders, we lower
operating costs and that should be a goal all of us have along the
line,” Look said. “It’s a goal we certainly have here in Anoka County.”
Still,
overall ridership isn’t growing as planned. Metro Transit needs
ridership to reach 4,500 commuters per day before it can apply for the
federal funds to help pay for an expansion of service to St. Cloud.
Northstar
proponents hope the Ramsey stop will help reach that goal, by
attracting a “Chicago-like” lifestyle that is built along the rails.
[italics added] Let's see. 2013 - fifty or a hundred years would be 2065 to 2113. We are short of that today. Matt these days, on Northstar's future, is not quoted in media.
Either he was blowing smoke back in 2013, still believes what he said but demurs, or is hiding from having changed his mind. That largely exhausts possibilities.
Look is obligated to speak up. To defend eleven million spent dollars, beyond having then said it came in two million under forecast. He still holds the same Anoka Board District 1 seat he held back then. Regularly salaried then to now.
Silence is not always golden.
If indeed, he still believes in the long-term perspective, stand up and say so, or am I expecting too much from a cautious man? On that time frame, he might be right, and if he still thinks so, that such speculative government spending remains justified, he should defend his statements, showing consistency.
'Splaining is due. If Matt Look has changed his mind, we all grow as we age and learn, and he should own up to over exuberance in his past public service. Silence, however, would be a disservice to the voters he represents. At least articulating a current position on something he was greatly instrumental in seeing from plan to actuality, is a minimal expectation. He need not convince, but he needs to speak, even if not wanting to..
Matt Look owes voters an explanation of some fashion. We await.
________FURTHER UPDATE________
Jim Abeler, Anoka's career politician over decades has no right to remain silent either. His constituents deserve his voicing his current thinking about Northstar.
Recall: Natalie Steffen while on Met Council was a major driving force for Northstar and for additional spending to have a Ramsey Station; but Steffen has left public life after seeking the Anoka County District 1 seat where Matt Look won that election. Abeler not only put his cred on the line for Natalie, he posed on her behalf putting his cred on the line for Northstar.
State Rep. Jim Abeler and Natalie review plans for a Northstar Commuter Rail station
in Ramsey. This proposed station would connect northwest Anoka County
to a downtown Minneapolis hub for present and future rail and bus
connections.
Natalie
was instrumental in obtaining nearly $4 million in Met Council grants
that made the Ramsey Municipal Parking ramp (in back-ground) and
amphitheatre possible. Natalie’s efforts to adopt a Met Council funding
formula helped make it possible for of Anoka to get $1.5 million for
downtown development.
Natalie: “It’s called returning tax dollars to the community and fostering economic betterment.”
[italics in original] Abeler touted and posed, plans held one side by Steffen, the other side by Abeler, together standing trackside on BNSF right-of-way; so what's his posture now? Keep Northstar on long-term speculation, or terminate the hemorrhaging by ending it years after great expenditure, in effect, admitting it is a failed venture which deserves no more life.
Abeler had his hand in things, and should now articulalte his present understandings. Hiding has no place for careerist politicians. Local power should not go silent when a key question arises where local power had a hand on the plans along with the key driving force toward making Northstar a done deal.
Of note as a possible admission of a learning curve somewhat upward and not flatlined, after Northstar's build-out and history from then to now, Met Council has NOT pushed any other commuter rail on routes it does not own. Including the question of Northstar being extended to St. Cloud; which is politics beyond Met Council's jurisdictional reach. Also worth noting before closing this post, building the thing to Big Lake and ending it there went beyond Met Council jurisdiction into Sherburne County; into Mary Kiffmeyer jurisdiction, and Mary should also be held to task for getting the servicing and maintenance site in her legislative district as part of the distribution of pork.
Hence, Mary Kiffmeyer should speak now, her hand was into things, or at least it surely appears so. Extending to Big Lake and no further, she can commute by rail to her home away from home, the Legislature in St. Paul, for as long as she and Northstar remain in play.
BOTTOM LINE - JUST SAY NO - to glide-and-slide silence now from politicians after the event was
pushed to a current status without success to show from build-out to the
present.
One fact, Look's fifty or a hundred years outlook will be
untested if Northstar is terminated now. Look would tell you that.
FURTHER: One last link, Strib, here, from this past March, again about a question of whether to shut the service down, or wait to see more, post-pandemic. A paragraph:
While the Metropolitan Council, which oversees public transportation in
the Twin Cities, has engaged in recent discussions with Hennepin, Anoka
and Sherburne counties about the fate of Northstar, no decisions have
been made. But the council has said all options are on the table.
Further excerpt:
Shutting down a commuter rail line is a complicated and expensive proposition, but not unheard of.
In Northstar's case, it would
require the state to pay $85 million to the U.S. Department of
Transportation, a partial reimbursement of federal funds used to build
the line. Koznick has suggested that Minnesota's congressional
delegation in Washington, D.C., should ask for a "waiver" from the hefty
fee.
Some transit lines have been
decommissioned nationwide, including the Loop Trolley in St. Louis and
the OnTrack suburban rail line in Syracuse, N.Y., both due to flagging
ridership.
But talk of shutting down
Northstar is "premature and ill-conceived," said Rep. Frank Hornstein,
DFL-Minneapolis, who chairs the House Transportation Finance and Policy
Committee. He characterized the diversion of Northstar money to
businesses in need as "cynical politics."
Hornstein believes public transit "will recover, but it will be slow."
The real issue with
Northstar, he added, was the "poor planning" that resulted in the line
ending in Big Lake, a rural outpost in Sherburne County, as opposed to
the more populous St. Cloud.
Short answer: Student loan forgiveness is what's been lost. Somehow, Biden presides, w/o any attention to that campaigning issue. Surprised?
An excerpt:
As of this year, one in four Americans — nearly 45 million people — have student debt, and U.S. college students and graduates collectively hold over $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. In Minnesota, 900,000 people carry student loan debt, owing an average of $31,250 in federal and private student debt.
With these numbers, it’s no surprise
that canceling student debt has become a calling card for Democrats;
during his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to cancel $10,000 in student debt per borrower once he became president.
That hasn’t happened, though Biden
did extend a moratorium on student loan payments during the COVID-19
pandemic, forgave billions of dollars in federal student loans and
committed to improving public service loan forgiveness programs. Beyond
that, Biden has said that he thinks Congress, not the president, has the
power to totally cancel student debt.
Glide and Slide - the old DC way of selective memory, and selective views of who can do what (presuming there is sufficient will to try). MinnPost subheadlined its item:
Even if Biden did what progressives are
calling for, experts say it would do little to change the larger
structural issues with post-secondary education in the U.S.
What structural issues? First, in the Crabgrass queue, the answer is not to keep young people off the labor market four years longer (two years for community college) by letting a subsidized program degenerate into four more years of high school, come one, come all. It could. Then a four year degree would mean little, unlike it being a sign of academic chops, today, from most universities (indeed, even now, we could discount "remote learning" PhD degrees from dubious outlets - hello Marcus B. - where things can slip to paying, writing a dissertation likely to go unread by any scholar, with the thing accredited, somehow, by some body which some State government (Ohio?) grants slack to, politics always having its answers). But digressions aside, MinnPost's item, again:
Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District
Rep. Ilhan Omar [...] .joined several other
progressive lawmakers in sending a letter
to President Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urging the
administration to release a memo assessing whether it has the authority
to cancel student debt through executive or administrative action.
“We know that there are 45 million
Americans that are shackled with student loan debt, and the average
amount of debt is more than $30,000,” Omar said. “I truly believe that
it’s important for us to cancel student debt in its totality, because
it’s going to help give Minnesota families and, you know, families
across this country the opportunity to pursue their dreams of
homeownership or opening a business and starting their lives.”
In
April, the White House promised it would release the memo in a matter
of weeks. But six months have passed since then. And though the
progressive lawmakers have yet to hear back from Biden (their deadline
for a response was last Friday), Cardona said on Tuesday that examining loan forgiveness is a “priority” for Biden.
Right up there with getting regular monthly pedicures might be an equal Biden priority. Or assuring everyone says "Dr. Jill" is one of Joe's priorities.
How f***ing prior is a priority, one might ask, the answer being "One of degree, not kind."
Excerpting further:
In their letter to Biden and Cardona,
Omar and the other progressives wrote that federal student debt could
be canceled with the “flick of your pen.”
To lawmakers like Omar, the issue of
student debt is not just economic. “If you look at Minnesota, we know
that while thousands of people have been struggling economically, the
disparities within the people of color and Indigenous folks is a dire
situation,” Omar said.
According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics,
Black and African American college graduates owe an average of $25,000
more in student loan debt than white college graduates. Four years after graduation,
48 percent of Black students owe an average of 12.5 percent more than
they borrowed and 29 percent face monthly student loan payments of $350
or more.
Dr. Dominique Baker, assistant
professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University, said
that divide comes from the racial discrimination that has been baked
into American life for hundreds of years.
“For centuries, we created policies
in our country that brought us to this point where Black individuals
tend to rely more on student loans,” Baker said. “And at that same time,
once they’ve taken out the loan, they face a discriminatory labor
market, and our discriminatory society is such that they struggle more
with being able to make their payments.”
[...] Baker also pointed out that a common
misconception surrounding student debt is that it only affects younger
people. While [...] older adults are also taking out significant Parent Plus loans, which
are federal student loans available to the parents of dependent undergrads.
“A lot of parent borrowers and about
15 percent of my clients are over the age of 55, and most of them will
have Parent Plus loans, and they are not able to retire because of the
amount of debt they have,” said Jan Miller, president of Miller Student
Loan Consulting.
[...]
So, without making a college degree as inconsequential as a high school degree now is, what you gonna do? Call ghost busters? Cheapening a university degree already exists, with too easy accreditation for suspect programs happening today. Having more of the same is nobody's answer to nothing. "Bethel University" simply fails to ring the bell the way Stanford, MIT, Yale or even Howard, Case-Western Reserve, or Carelton College rings the bell of actual academic credibility and gravitas. It ain't the big leagues. Never will be. Ditto, "Liberty University." Four years and a piece of paper might open doors, depending on who issued the paper page you end up holding. It can be in Latin, or English, or in another language, but the question has to always be which institution issued it and how high are standard there (And yes, Jarad Kushner holds a Harvard BA degree like his brother's, dad apparently getting a two-for for twenty five million into the school's endowment fund). The beat goes on.
________UPDATE_______
Joe Manchin has a degree. Mark Zuckerberg does not. Proving you can be an asshole, degree or not. Per NYT -
