Crowd check: The economy at street level
The Mole is no economist, and chances are you aren’t either. But while professional economy watchers continue to debate whether we’re in a recession yet, the air of panic among analysts, investors, and people on the street grows more unmistakable by the day. Earlier this week, the stock market fell nearly 500 points in morning trading before the Fed revived it–for how long, we’ll see–with an emergency rate cut. The real estate crisis shows no sign of reaching bottom anytime soon (Behind the Mortgage blogger Alex Stenback said in a recent Molecast that he thought the bottom was still 12-18 months away); consumer debt, government deficits, and foreign trade deficits stand at record levels; and the dollar is so weak that experts are speculating about when it will fall from its throne as the world’s benchmark currency (previous Mole post).
Our question: What’s your dread level about all this? Does it strike you as just another one of those cyclical downturns we go through periodically, or something worse? Again, we’re not asking for expert speculation here. Just your gut sense, and whatever you’ve been saying or hearing about it.
More: The Molecast I did two weeks ago with economics journalist Doug Henwood is the clearest rundown of current economic indicators I’ve heard from any source. I highly and immodestly recommend you check it out, if you didn’t listen at the time.
Vlog: Angry Clown, “The Carol Molnau Song”
The Angry Clown celebrates everybody’s favorite local villain of 2007–in song.
Who’s your top civic villain of 2007?
You could think of this as 11 Who Don’t Kare: We want to know who struck you as the biggest public turd in the punchbowl that was Twin Cities 2007. So after conferring with some fellow Festivus celebrants, the Mole has assembled a provisional list of 11 nominees and the grievances they face, but no doubt we’re forgetting many worthy candidates. Who?
DFL leadership: The Kelliher-and-Pogemiller-led troops parlayed a big 2006 electoral victory into a) no meaningful legislative progress, b) a crisis in party finances, and c) barely a peep during the “battle” over a special session to deal with transportation funding.
Minneapolis Downtown Council chair Sam Grabarski: Has big ideas for making downtown a more effective retail theme park, and they include allowing cars on Nicollet Mall.
St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington: Was the object of complaints and a lawsuit charging political cronyism in the administration of his department; never apologized for his department’s conduct in the warrantless seizure of a local TV reporter’s cell phone records.
Former United Health CEO Bill McGuire: Made the most expensive settlement of a back-dated stock options case in 20007; complained to a judge that the freezing of his remaining $800 million in options was interfering with his financial prerogatives; became a billionaire running a health insurance company that perennially denies claims it should be paying.
Kevin McHale: He had to trade Kevin Garnett by the time he did it, yes, but whose fault was that? You’d be hard-pressed to find any professional sports franchise from the past five years that has made so little of so much.
Minneapolis Police Department: Besides the usual quotient of embarrassing high-profile incidents–this month’s utterly unfounded, gunfire-filled raid on a north Minneapolis home, the city’s $4.5 million payout to Officer Duy Ngo, shot in 2003 by one of his own colleagues–the department was also hit by a pair of civil rights lawsuits alleging chronic prejudicial treatment of non-Anglo cops, the more publicized of which is pitting five of the department’s longest-tenured and most respected African-American officers against MPD Chief Tim Dolan.
MnDOT Commissioner Carol Molnau: No explanation required.
Governor Tim Pawlenty: Sure, we know about the 60 percent approval ratings. We also know that if Carol Molnau’s management of MnDOT wins her an uncontested spot on this list, then the man who appointed her–and who benefited politically from her acquiescence in the face of whatever budgetary crumbs MnDOT was thrown–has to be on the list too, doesn’t he?
Twins owner Carl Pohlad: Should Pohlad even be on this list, or should we retire him and name the award after him? Only a few years ago, amid a run of Twins division titles and higher-than-customary payrolls, there were those cynics and paranoiacs who swore that once the Twins got their stadium, they would stop spending even to this new, minimally competitive level. Lo and behold: Torii’s gone, Johan is going, and the chance to build a Central Division powerhouse around the nucleus of Mauer, Morneau, and Santana is already history; the Tigers have seen to that.
Par Ridder: There are mitigating factors here: 1) Ridder’s always entertaining, not quite human-looking hair, and 2) the fact that his travails provided comic relief during a year of otherwise disastrous news in local mainstream media. Still, he is not a hard man to hate.
TJ Waconia and the fly-by-night mortgage industry: TJ Waconia gets the honor of naming rights here because, as Steve Brandt wrote last month in the Strib, “the FBI has identified the owners of TJ Waconia as the targets of a mortgage fraud investigation that would represent the biggest such case uncovered so far in the Twin Cities area.” But the category really belongs to all the hustlers who, by whatever means, either scammed homeowners outright or put them into mortgages that were bound to blow up on them.
LOL Polz: Camera enthusiast Rich Stanek
Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool, or to the one at I Can Has Cheezburger. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
Op-ed: For the hearing-impaired, web’s multimedia revolution represents an old battle that shouldn’t have to be fought again
After corresponding with us about this issue, reader David Galitz agreed to write the following piece for the Daily Mole. (Thanks, David.) You can submit op-eds too: send to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
As a hearing impaired individual, I find myself following the birth of the new web media with frustration and concern. Beginning with Julia Child’s “French Chef” in 1975, it took over 35 years to achieve near universal closed captioning of television programs. Only in 2006 was the goal of 100% closed captioned programming (with certain exceptions) reached. Today, as increasing amounts of information and programming are being placed on the web in audio or video format, little of that content is being made accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing. For example, services such as Amazon’s Unbox, NBC’s Hulu, and Netflix all lack captioning support, and growing numbers of broadcasters are streaming their shows, news stories, and entire news broadcasts to the web without captions. Political candidates are also increasingly turning to the web with multimedia content. A quick check of the major Presidential candidates shows only Hilary Clinton providing captioned video content (on approximately 50% of the video clips).
Why does this matter? Ideally, it wouldn’t if web media were merely a new platform for distributing the same content found elsewhere. However, more and more of this audio and video is being provided as web-only content: “webisodes” of popular programs, exclusive webcasts of news broadcasts and reports, even traditional newspapers are getting into the multi-media game on-line. There is also new media and citizen journalism sites such as The Daily Mole, TheUpTake, and even YouTube, which promise to cover stories and perspectives that have been neglected or ignored by traditional media outlets in the past.
While the frustration of not being provided similar options to participate in and enjoy the same entertainment and cultural opportunities is significant, it is the potential lack of accessibility to the expanding news and information sources that Read more
Vlog: Did Critical Mass bicyclists cause the 35W bridge collapse?
Local citizen videoblogger The Angry Clown thinks the answer is no. He only blames them for everything else.
LOL Polz: Tim Pawlenty and RT Rybak
Today’s offering is from reader Loose Strife.
Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
LOL Polz, continued: Tim and Sonia, Michele and George
Some fresh entries in our continuing LOL Polz feature, from reader Peter Bartz-Gallagher.
Send us your LOL Polz! If you’ve never done this before, the Mole recommends you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
Gallery call: Send us your LOL Polz
This started as a gag item in the very earliest phase of beta–i.e., when there was not actually anyone here. At that point, Daily Mole members Jill Bernard and Chris Hesler made it their own.
Now we’re resurrecting LOL Polz (which, we admit, is almost eerily like LOL Cats). Send us yours.
Never done this before? Jillybee and the Mole recommend you pick out a few photos to doctor and head over to this online LOL Cats builder tool. When you’re done, send the results in jpg format to steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.
There’s more below the jump.
And your 2007 person of the year is…?
It’s year-end listmaking time, and Time is teasing its Person of the Year feature by asking media notables to pick their own. A couple of their choices:
Brian Williams, veteran journalist who became anchor of NBC Nightly News in 2004, replacing Tom Brokaw: “My nominee for 2007 Person of the Year is a woman–a woman with a history of abuse, a woman who has never run for elective office, someone we all know, someone who makes her presence known on a daily basis in all our lives and, for my money, is better than any male alternative. That woman is Mother Earth. I think the environment is the compelling issue of our time.”
Stephen King, author of more than 50 best-selling novels, some of which have become feature films: “Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan symbolize the media’s growing obsession with issues of personality over substance. People care more about the details of Spears’ child-custody case than they do about where the billions the U.S. government has poured into Iraq have gone. It’s time for a discussion about whether the news media have chucked their responsibilities and run off to Tabloid Disneyland.”
So who’s your person of the year–be it locally, nationally, or globally?
Crowdsourcing: What are your favorite local/regional blogs?
Yes, we know there are numerous aggregators of local blogs out there, but the Mole wants to know what you think. And for partly selfish reasons–we’re fine-tuning the old RSS reader in preparation for launching a regular blogs survey akin to TC Morning Roundup.
The only rule is that there are no rules: You can cite one blog or several, old or new, media-affiliated or independent, professional or amateur, famous or obscure… just as long as you think it’s good.
Big Deep Questions: Are Americans the most frightened people in the world?
War. Global warming. Terrorists. Immigrants. The real estate crisis. Pit bulls. The stock market. Second-hand smoke. Internet pedophiles and predators. Pandemic flu. Oil prices. Sex crimes. Drug dealers. Public schools. The Republicans. The Democrats.
There are plenty of goblins, real and imagined, that keep Americans awake at night.
Are we, as Steve Olson wrote at his blog several months ago, “a nation of frightened wimps?”
Flu season: The Angry Clown is not afraid to kiss a chicken to make a point
Reader op-ed: It’s still okay to bash Native Americans—at least on the Right
The following op-ed is by local Dump Bachmann blogger and Daily Mole site member Karl Bremer:
What happens when a leading local Republican blogger publishes a virulently racist screed that refers to Native Americans as “dirt worshipping heathens,” “domestic terrorists permanently stuck in the Stone Age” and “humanoid animals,” and describes them as a race “so primitive that they created nothing of any lasting value, nor did they contribute anything of note to the world”?
In Minnesota, evidently nothing—at least from his right-leaning compatriots in the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers and the mainstream media.
Minneapolis regulatory affairs consultant Tracy Eberly published such a piece on his local blog Anti-Strib on October 11. Those are just a few salient quotes from it. If you want to read his further defense of genocide against Native Americans, you’ll have to visit his website yourself. Suffice to say it would make Andrew Jackson proud.
Eberly is a member of a group known as the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, or more appropriately, MOB. Self-described as “a group of mostly center-right bloggers,” MOB includes virtually every Republican blogger in the Twin Cities, including GOP-affiliated Minnesota Democrats Exposed, TCF-connected Power Line, and St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial board member Craig Westover. Eberly reportedly finished third in the runoff for their little club’s “mayor,” so he clearly has their respect.
Yet since Eberly’s “dirt-worshipping heathens” column ran last month, the silence from the usually fawning MOB mob has been deafening.
Minnesota Democrats Exposed is authored by Michael Brodkorb, a paid consultant to the Minnesota GOP, Norm Coleman and many other past GOP campaigns. Brodkorb calls Anti-Strib.com a “daily read,” and it’s the first permanent link on his website, where he has been flogging Al Franken relentlessly lately for Franken’s statements about Native Americans. Yet Brodkorb, an oft-quoted blogger who is not known for his reluctance to express his opinion about Democrats when they cross the line of civility, has been mute about the viciousness of his own colleague’s writing.
Anti-Strib.com also has the support of a blog bearing Governor Tim Pawlenty’s name and likeness, Party of Pawlenty. While Pawlenty may have little or nothing to do with the website honoring him, it clearly seems blessed with his imprimatur.
Party of Pawlenty features a permanent link to Anti-Strib on its home page, too—right below Read more
Slight return: The Angry Clown would like to have a word with you concerning the governor’s 60 percent approval rating
Local citizen, Daily Mole reader, and first-time videoblogger The Angry Clown recently shared his thoughts on Governor Tim Pawlenty’s persistently high approval ratings, and now we share them with you.
Local crime news: Why are some murders more equal than others?
It’s not a new development, and it’s hardly unique to the Twin Cities, but the avid local coverage of yesterday’s arrest in the September murder of a white man in south Minneapolis is yet another lesson in the political economy of crime news. At local newspaper and TV news sites alike, the the arrest of Donald Eugene Jackson in the September murder of south Minneapolis resident Mark Loesch–beaten to death on a late-night bike ride that the suspect claimed was a pot-buying run–is the most-covered story in town today.
Per a Google news search, at least 13 stories or updates have been posted about the arrest at local news sites in the past 24 hours. By contrast, the arrest of a suspect in the Halloween double murder of north Minneapolis residents Charles Edward Woods-Wilson and Ira Lee Brown Jr. barely rated a peep in the local news cycle.
You tell us: Why?
Charles Edward Woods Wilson Crime Donald Eugene Jackson Ira Lee Brown Jr. Local Media Mark Loesch Murder Race 35W bridge aftermath: The DFL dogs that didn’t bark in the night
The media love anniversaries like mothers love ugly babies, but here’s one that isn’t getting much attention: Today is the three-month anniversary of the 35W bridge collapse. And during these past three months, whenever I have talked with people who don’t live here about the public aftermath of one of the year’s top US news stories, the question that’s come up most often is where’s the blowback? There seemed to be no shortage of anger among the populace at large, but somehow it never managed to make itself felt in the public arena: at the Capitol and in news media. (Nick Coleman’s angry columns in the Star Tribune were a notable exception–and, among local mainstream voices, perhaps the only one.)
“If this had happened here,” a friend in New York said one day, “there would be blood running in the halls in Albany.” Yet the governor who has overseen years of statewide spending cuts is enjoying approval ratings in the neighborhood of 60 percent, and the MnDOT commissioner (and lieutenant governor) who presides over a badly managed transportation bureaucracy has apparently weathered the storm as well. Back in August, Garrison Keillor wrote, “Through this stately ballet, the Good People of Minnesota continued to wonder: Why did this bridge suddenly pancake on an August evening and who (if anyone) in authority had an inkling of its poor rating when last inspected? On the other hand, many people felt that a time of tragedy is no time to be pointing the finger of blame. Many men who have shot their wives have felt the same way.”
The facile answer is to blab about our most beloved cultural cliche, Minnesota Nice. But when you get down to cases, it’s difficult not to conclude that the real story here is the absolute timidity and capitulation of the DFL. The non-controversy over a special legislative session to deal with bridge and infrastructure funding issues sums it up nicely: The Democrats wanted to raise the gas tax in a special session. The governor said no. The Democrats said well, okay. The governor, raising the ante, said the special session should be restricted entirely to flood relief measures–and specifically, flood relief measures that wouldn’t require any additional state revenues. The Democrats said well, okay.
Small wonder Tim Pawlenty is still riding some of the highest poll ratings of his career. With enemies like the DFL leadership, who needs friends?
Minneapolis wi-fi service so far: a gentleman’s C-
Site member Geoff Garton writes: Boy was I eager to be the first one on my block to sign up for US Internet’s Wifi service. Boy am I starting to feel dumb. I selectively tuned out those voices of reason trying to explain that residential wifi was going to be a tricky proposition; that wifi is an inherently dodgy technology; that it’d be wise to sit back and watch how Minneapolis Wifi shakes out before subscribing. Well I’d been tethered to the dial-up for about ten years and I just couldn’t wait a minute longer.
A little over a month into my two-year contract (yeah, I was really excited), I’m giving the service a C-. My first week of service: several hours of access followed by 5 days of no service. “Node is down” was the daily explanation. Node went back “up” at some point and service resumed, but service of a distinctly intermittent nature. I probably get bounced, on average, twice an hour. Which is especially lovely after composing a long, important email that didn’t get saved.
Speeds are another issue. I’m paying for “up to 3 Mb/s” download speeds. I understand the “up to” qualifier, but my average speedtest.net download speed is around 1.5 Mb/s. I’ve recently heard that the “up to 3 Mb/s” is actually calculated as the sum of download and upload speeds, e.g., if max upload is 1 Mb/s, your “up to” download speed is actually only 2 Mb/s. I’ve yet to have this “officially” confirmed, but it came from a USI employee, and this is not what the sales and pricing information says.
The techs have all been courteous, patient, and well-intentioned, but I don’t think they have the tools to make wifi a dependable residential broadband option. Not now anyway. So, my experience in a nutshell: wifi is less dependable than dial-up, not a heck of a lot faster, and about three times as expensive. If the system was not ready to go live, it shouldn’t have been marketed as such. If the technology is inherently less dependable then other internet connections, this should be explained and subscription rates should reflect that fact. It seems to me a free “beta-testing” period should have been implemented citywide so that consumers could experience the technology first hand while USI worked on the kinks and managed expectations.
All that said, I’d love to see the service be successful, for the benefit of all concerned parties. I hope USI can come through with some fixes or they’re going to see some very disappointing subscription rates.
Larry Craig: So why should he quit?
In the past couple of months, Idaho Senator Larry Craig has practiced his own homespun version of James Brown’s No man alive can make me leave this stage! routine, clinging to his U.S. Senate seat despite pleading guilty to soliciting an undercover cop at the MSP airport last summer and losing an appeal to overturn the plea.
But here’s our question. High public official is caught in compromising, illicit sexual situation and tries to fib his way out of it when the news goes public. Isn’t this an awful lot like the Ken Starr witchhunt that attended the case of Bill, Monica, and the blue dress? What do consenting adults’ sex habits have to do with their fitness for governance? Which is another way of asking, why should Craig resign his seat?
Crowdsourcing: Had any close encounters with city inspections personnel?
It’s no secret that the cuts in state LGA payments to cities stemming from Pawlenty I tax cuts have set Minneapolis and St. Paul scrambling to find creative ways to pull additional dollars from residents’ pockets. One of the most obvious means is to step up the enforcement efforts (thus also the volume of tickets and fines) of their Inspections divisions. Mike Mosedale wrote a story about it when we were both at City Pages, and I’ve heard many such tales since then. In my own north Minneapolis neighborhood, it’s not unusual to see city inspectors cruising the alleys at 5 MPH, necks craned to spot any fresh transgressions against the city code. Five years ago, you never saw that. Read more
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