Fraters Libertas

A Sunday Stroll Through The Star Tribune

Just in case there were any second thoughts about my decision to dump the Minneapolis Star Tribune, this Sunday’s edition went a long way to dispelling them. Let’s take a walk through the pages shall we?

Our first stop is the Metro section. Doug Grow kicks things off with the story on a vacant lot in north Minneapolis. What had once been a crack house was razed by the city. Neighbors started a community garden in the empty lot in 1993 and have tended it since then. Now the county wants to sell the property off in hopes that it an affordable house will be built on the lot. Sounds like a good idea right?

Not to the gardeners. They want the city to leave the lot as is so they can keep “their” garden, affordable housing be damned. Instead of NIMBY we have NIMG (not in my garden). Thankfully the authorities aren’t buying the sob song that these botanical squatters are selling and the property will be sold. Which allows Grow to end his column with a tug at the heartstrings that shows just how much he cares about Doug’s People:

"Why don't they understand?" Leathers asked, a tear in her eye.

Staying in the Metro neighborhood beat, we come across the latest offering by Nick Coleman:

Minnesota might as well be Kansas for many of us. We may still have 10,000 lakes, but they are off limits to a lot of us. Any innocent out there still harboring nostalgic notions about the affordability of lakeshore living here is stuck in the '80s.

From Brainerd, where cabins are being gobbled up three and four at a time to make way for huge new homes, to the shores of White Bear and Minnetonka, the squire-ification of Minnesota is speeding up.

Modern-day barons with new fortunes are putting together parcels of lakeshore to forge big estates and build humongous palaces worthy of a sultan. I have no agenda here: I just think we ought to recognize what's happening.

No agenda here? Come on Nick don’t sell yourself short. You have an agenda. It’s called fanning the flames of class envy. His entire column is nothing but jealous carping about how much lake homes cost in Minnesota.

Some of us might view the news of raising prices in lake homes as a positive. After all in order to afford these pricey waterside abodes people must be taking home some decent ching. If people can buy cabins up North in addition to their homes here, it’s a sign of affluence. Which means that the local economy might not be on the verge of a Depression, as many of those who share Nick’ political viewpoint seem to believe.

Would Nick be happier if the real estate bubble burst and we were witnessing a rapid deflation of lakeside (and all other) realty prices? I wouldn’t bet against it.

One final point has to be made. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood not too far from the shores of Lake Minnetonka. If Nick seriously believes that property on Lake Minnetonka was “affordable” back in the 80’s he’s delusional. The premium that such property currently commands is higher today than in the past, but there always been a such a premium.

Let’s check out the Opinion/Editorial pages next. Where we find not one, not two, but THREE pieces singing the praises of higher taxes.

Eric Dregni gets the ball rolling with a paean to the glories of Norway called Where taxes are high and the citizens love it:

'Welfare state' may be dirty words in English, but the equivalent Velferdsstaten inspires nationalist pride in Norway. "It's the system we have chosen," a teacher of Norwegian in Trondheim told me, "and I'm happy to pay the taxes for it.''

I'd never met anyone who was happy for taxes, but the benefits are soon clear. Death and taxes may be unavoidable, but in Norway at least you get your health care, higher education and pension provided by the government, and you won't be out on the street if you lose your job. Norway's system offers its citizens a degree of stability and certainty unheard of in the United States. Plus, families receive a monthly allotment for each child of 972 kroner (about $145), almost-free day care, and mothers are allowed 42 weeks of paid maternity leave -- or a whole year at 80 percent of wages.

Because of these social services and redistribution of wealth, Norway can boast the highest quality of life of any nation for the last few years. The highest cost of living paired with the highest quality of life hardly makes for an extravagant lifestyle, however.

An American friend living in Oslo put it this way: "It's not that we buy more things or have more things, it's that we are guaranteed a high standard of living. We don't have two cars, we take the bus, and we can probably count the number of times that we go out to eat."

Here we go again. If we could only be more like ______(insert name of some European socialist paradise) life would be perfect. At least this is an honest look at what many on the left wish for us. No one has too much, but everyone gets something, whether earned or not. Again it’s the old trade off: freedom vs. security, in this case economic.

If you like the Norwegian system, I suggest you move to Norway. As for me, I like buying more things, having two cars, and going out to eat countless times.

Eric obviously hasn’t been reading the Strib much if he says he never met anyone who is happy for taxes. Why just today the paper features Dave Hage and Lori Sturdevant beating the drum, and arguing that the state is headed to hell in a hand basket if we don’t come to our senses and agree pay more. Tax me please. Tax me again. More, more, yes, yes, ohhhhh…

Our stroll ends in the Strib’s Variety section. The Variety title refers to the variety of methods the paper uses to hammer home political messages in a section of the paper one would not typically associate with such views.

Today the whole front page of the Variety section is dedicated to the first in a five part series called Immigrants The New Activists. It’s a profile of how some recent immigrants (no distinction is usually made between illegal and legal) have bought in to the notion of victim hood being peddled by the left. It favorably compares the actions of these activists with the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements of the past. The words “racism” and “social justice” are ubiquitous, and of course we hear about cases of poor immigrants whose rights about trampled:

In many ways, Armando Blas-Garcia is a typical suburban father. He works as a shipping clerk for the Instant Web Cos., a direct-mail operation in Chanhassen. His wife, Maria Luisa German-Flores, is a cook at Mystic Lake Casino. They live with their children -- Maria, 17; Areli, 15, and George, 12 -- in a $279,000 home they own in Chanhassen.

Last Monday, Blas-Garcia spent his morning delivering two urgent packages to the Minnesota offices of U.S. Senators Mark Dayton and Norm Coleman. They contained a desperate plea to the senators to intervene on his behalf with immigration officals who in February ordered the family to leave the country when Blas-Garcia's work permit runs out May 12. Although he has worked legally in Minnesota for the past six years and taken the appropriate steps to apply for citizenship, his request was denied.

(Yes, that is how the word “official” was spelled in the Strib story. The error appeared in both in the print and online editions. Nice editing eh?)

In reality of course Bals-Garcia is not a typical suburban father. He has broken the law and is now being held responsible:

"Mr. Blas-Garcia is not a bad person," said Tim Counts, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Bloomington. "He overstayed his visa, and that's illegal. He had full access to the process, and both a judge and the board of appeals said he can't stay."

And he should not stay. He had his day(s) in court and he lost. I’m sure that the sale of his $279,000 home will go a long way to easing his return to wherever he came from.

I can’t wait for four more days of having to wade through these stories to get to the comics. The end can’t come soon enough. The end of my subscription that is.