A little bit more reaction to the Seifert moderaticide.
All that being the case, the punishment meted out by House Minority Leader Marty Seifert to his six caucusmates who voted for the transportation bill seems unseemly.
Seifert announced Tuesday that he would strip the six of their leadership positions, and he threatened to withdraw reelection campaign help. It’s believed to be an unprecedented retaliation in modern times. Nothing comparable, for example, befell the probusiness “Woodticks” within the DFL caucus in the 1980s.
The six GOP supporters of the transportation bill merely did what all 201 legislators routinely vow to do: They voted their consciences.
Lori Sturdevant - Star Tribune
(Dr. No and his radical anti-transportation allies are still going batty, kneecapping rogue Republican lawmakers who — zut alors! — voted their consciences and threatening revenge against those big-spending libs from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce who supported the override. The word “meltdown” comes to mind).
Nick Coleman - Star Tribune
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I love how you keep calling this moderate and then cite Lori Sturdevant, a liberal columnist and Nick Coleman, a radical lefty columnist as proof that the bill was moderate. The largest tax increase in state’s history is not a moderate bill. If Sturdevant and Coleman were so supportive of transportation, why didn’t they support efforts in the legislature two years ago to spend $1.6 billion on transportation using the new dollars put into transportation in the MVET Constitutional Amendment? The answer is simple: Sturdevant and Coleman want more tax increases.
Ah, so we’re back to the tax dichotomy. It’s all about the money!
So let’s see: wanting to spend money AND levy taxes to do it, makes me a tax and spend liberal, or lefty, or whatever. On the other hand, we got the conservatives who’ll spend money too, but not as much, and then take out all kinds of bonds to avoid raising taxes, or raise “fees”, which really aren’t taxes, so we can raise them just a little bit without getting in much trouble with our ideological masters in the American for Tax Reform and the Taxpayers League. You call me a lefty and want to raise taxes, I think you anti-tax folks support ideologically-based public policy that has little basis in reality or the public good past individual self-interest. I guess that makes you guys the spend-and-borrow right. Ever noticed how deficits go through the roof when you guys get in office?
And the transportation amendment phases in sales tax revenues on vehicles in a 60/40 split to roads/transit over five years. That money won’t be completely dedicated to transportation until June 2011, and as far as I know there isn’t a clear formula for how the money will be phased in, only that it all HAS to go to transportation by 2011. The wisdom of constitutionally dedicating funds is a completely different discussion.
When they put the train in between Minneapolis and St. Paul, I think they should call it the “Moderate Line.” Because it was the result of moderates coming together to pass this great moderate transportation bill.
Choo Choo !!!!
Well you can keep lying Dan since it is all you have when it comes to light rail. The facts on that subject continue to escape you completely which is I imagine why the most intellegent thing you seem to come up with is “Choo Choo”.
The light rail advocates remind me of the Neocons who were so happy with the invasion of Iraq and continue to say it was a good idea despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I think this Washington Post Article may be on to the reasons why. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901.html?sid%3DST2008021801642&sub=AR
The Seifert sympathizers, those who insist on consuming services they then refuse to pay for, have been silent on an important question: For how long have you been driving (or using any of the millions of products brought to you via truck and car) and not paying close to what the capital and operating cost is for the road system? Are your kids responsible to pick up the team ala the borrow-and-spend Republican approach?
I am a small business owner, and I don’t generally offer or accept IOUs for payment. The House Republicans are likely to find out, once the scare campaign wears thin for the electorate, that voters don’t either.
If you don’t agree, that’s fine, but don’t bother spraying the blogger acid on me, I’m not going to engage that. Let’s just start at the minimum of paying for what we use, like grown ups.
What am I lying about? That it was a moderate bill? Sorry, but every DFLer (which alone constitutes 2/3 of the legislature) and eight Republicans supported this bill. So did the Chamber of Commerce. And the Pioneer Press. The idea that this isn’t a moderate bill is a joke.
You guys (and by you guys I mean light rail opponents) are totally unwilling to listen to reason on light rail. But since this MODERATE bill has passed, you don’t need to be convinced. The train is coming.
Choo Choo !!!!
Dan,
I was for the gas tax and am more than willing to listen to reason on light rail. The fact is there has been no information that supports it, none. The fact that you can’t provide any make me think you are the one that is being unreasonable. You lie by claiming that the transit part of this bill was as moderate as the rest. If the two would have been separated one would have passed and one would have failed. Dishonest people like yourself are happy that the DFL tacked on something most people were against because it was the only way to get what you wanted. A referendum on the sales tax would have spoiled your fun.
You can be proud of being the kind of person that takes money from those least able to afford it in order to waste it on something that will provide no measurable benefit if you want. To me that isn’t moderate. It is simple unethical.
Light rail is more expensive per passenger mile than buses or cars. It is more dangerous,it encourages sprawl and most importantly it spends money that should be spent on higher priority items like health care and education. The state is cutting spending, the DFL included, and you are happy about a billion dollar waste that will do nothing more than put money into the pockets of developers.
If you had any facts I assume you would use them. Your “choo choo” is the equivalent of sticking you fingers in your ears, closing your eyes and hoping those nasty things called facts just go away.
Kerosene,
First, I don’t think most people were against light rail. Maybe most people you talk to are, though.
Second, light rail does cost more than roads. But you get much greater passenger volume on light rail, reduced pollution (remember the pollution alerts?), reduced traffic congestion, and reduced wear and tear on critical arteries because there are less people on the roads. In short, advocates of light rail tend to be more advocates of a multimodal transit system, where there are a variety of choices other than one person = one car. The transit system currently being planned is sepcifcally designed to get people from where they live to where they work. It just happens to be in the suburbs. Transit is not necessarily a cause of sprawl, but it is a function of it. In fact transit encourages growth in the urban cores because people can get around easily without having to own cars. There are your measurable benefits. We need to reduce the number of cars on the road. Single-passenger vehicles are a terribly inefficient way to move people.
And it is not more dangerous. We haven’t had transit rail in the Twin Cities in 50 years. In three years, we’ve have 5 fatalities. Tragic, yes. But only the one last June, where the woman who was killed stumbled and got caught between the train and the platform was really tragic. The rest were people who tried to jump the safety gates when they went down, or cross the track in front of a moving train. I don’t necessarily think people should die for making a bad choice, but trains don’t particularly care who you are when you’re in their way.
Anyway, choo choo!
Jason-
An excellent and nuanced argument for light rail. Unfortunately, this is a blog. Chris doesn’t beleive anything that Brodkerb hasn’t passed on. KH, well, if you can show it will be done perfectly, the first time, for no extra money, and no real world political considerations will enter into, well, KH will be for it. Until then…
Well, you gotta make the argument if you want to change people’s minds. Or at least challenge the bloodyminded ideas people sometimes have.
I made my mind up on rail years ago, after visiting Europe. Montreal also, has a magnificent mass transit system.
Dan,
The cost for light rail is higher per passenger mile, that takes into account passenger volume. Subsidization of transit, hiding the cost from the user, is what causes sprawl. It happened with roads and rail is no different. That is the issue not the fact it is a train. I take the bus or a moped to work most days and really don’t give a rats ass about what mode people use. We just shouldn’t subsidize the overconsumption of transit. Anybody actually interested in the environment or efficiently would first and foremost be against ethanol and for a gas tax that was large enough to pay the entire cost of roads. That would discourage waste. If rail actually reduced congestion it would simply encourage more sprawl and reduce the incentives for people to live close to work or carpool.
The rail being put in here is more deadly per passenger mile than roads. Who’s fault the accident was is of no importance since the same level of stupidity happens on the roads. Having an unstoppable object like a train interact with cars and pedestrians is simply just dangerous. The next line to St. Paul will be much worse in this regard since it will not have a dedicated corridor along most of it’s path. That only five people have died is simply a factor of how few passenger miles $750 million of light rail gets you.
The fact that you don’t think most people are against light rail is not born out in how it was funded. If there were wide spread support it could have been acted on as a separate piece of legislation and given us who will be paying for it a chance to vote on the regressive sales tax increase. The dishonesty in getting it funded was needed because there are no fact that show it is worth while for the environment or as transportation.
The facts are the facts and no amount of wishing will make them go away.
Dumb, dumb!
“Subsidization of transit, hiding the cost from the user, is what causes sprawl.”
Man, that’s just plain crazy. I think you really need to provide some links to back up what you are saying. And that Susan Jacoby piece doesnt count.
Overconsumption of transit? Are you actually serious?
So we should all just roll up everything and stay home? People interact with moving cars all the time, and a heck of a lot more people die in car crashes, or are hit by cars than have been nailed by a train. So let’s just all stay home, since by your logic travel is dangerous. That’s what dumb. Do we need to ask ourselves, do I *really* need to go to this place? Would I want to be accused of being a conspicuous consumer of transit? Come on.
You’re also picking and choosing your arguments. You’re citing how rail gets funded, and there are only so many ways to fund capital improvement projects, rather than challenging why we’re building transit in the first place. By the time you get pissed off it’s fait accompli, my friend, so get off your tax kick and think about solutions to our transit problems. Cos, you know, we’re pretty far gone and solutions might be expensive.
And we can agree on ethanol.
Yes, overconsumption of transit.
There is a lot of space between staying home and the fact that we over consume transit just like there is a lot of space between starving and being obese. Much of the problem we now have with transit is how we developed the freeway system. The fact that there was no cost attached to it’s use produced the sprawl that has hurt the environment and caused massive transit based waste. Doing the same things with trains will not change the result.
Part of the solution is to not make our current problems worse by adding to them with overly expensive ineffective and dangerous things like the metro light rail system. The best step would be to raise the gas tax so that all funding for roads comes from those people that use them. That would encourage denser communities, investment in alternate energy technologies and might even get us to the point in a decade or two where rail transit can compete on a per dollar basis with roads.
Light rail only allows people to pretend they are doing something about transit. The fact that it is more expensive, discourages efficient development and is more dangerous are only examples of how it is moving us in the wrong direction.
Talk about regressive. In that case, why not just abandon public support of transportation, lease everything to private companies, and have everything be a toll?
That would be *perfect* under your logic, since everyone who’s using the roads would be paying for them, and the people who are staying home, aren’t using the roads. You keep wanting to make all this swirl around tax policy, when in fact the issues we’re dealing with go way beyond taxes, or even transit. You combat sprawl by smart planning and zoning.
Sprawl did not happen through transportation. That is only a proximal cause. Sprawl happened because the Twin Cities population exploded in the past 30 years, and land for new development was cheaper outside the periphery of the metro beltway than inside it. That we had a decent road system made it easier, but had we not already had one, we would have built one and then bitched about sprawl anyway. The ultimate cause is that Americans are not happy unless they have a house on three acres and they can’t see their neighbors. We have sprawl because people want that, are willing to pay through the nose to get it, and are willing to spend 90 minutes or more in their cars for a commute every day to get to it. THAT is why we have sprawl. You can’t tax the hell out of people to get them to change, because they are already taxed out the wazoo for it and don’t care.
Instead you have to invest in the urban cores, and get people to want to live there, and that means transit, it means controlling crime, it means urban renewal and whole host of other things Republicans don’t want to pay for but are willing to pay lip service to, or pass as unfunded mandates.
THAT is why we pay for transit. People want it in their city, they’re willing, with certain exceptions, to pay for it, because it makes it quicker and easier to get around densely populated areas, takes up less room than acres of parking lots, doesn’t create clouds of smog, and promotes new development in the urban core. You could argue rather persuasively that transit acts against sprawl because it makes the urban cores livable again.
Choo choo!
As I e-mailed Ms.Sturdevant, when Roger Moe kicked Bob Lessard out of the building, that was retaliation! Had even one DFLer voted their conscience instead of the party line we might have seen how the DFL handles those that step out of line, yet none of them did, a tribute the strength of the Majority Leader.
Jason,
Light rail is 81 times the cost of a road per mile. That formula doesn’t even count the operating costs. You people on the left talk about the Hiawatha Line being a success. If it’s so successful, why is it that fares only account for 37% of the operating costs and the other 63% has to come from government subsidies?
As for your socialist urban core utopia, why should government be telling people where to and where not to live. I have an idea, maybe if they got rid of the crack houses that are right next to some of the major downtown condos, more people would want to live in downtown Minneapolis. Maybe if we had less crime, more people would choose to live in the urban core.
What I’d like to know is why Lori Sturdevant and others haven’t editorialized against Pogemiller threatening a Republican Senator for speaking out against the DFL majority’s actions against Molnau. It’s pretty amazing how some on the left are so interested in free speech when it’s their axe to grind yet are so willing to shut off dissent from the other side.
Jason,
The increase in population was the fuel for sprawl but the fact that we hid the cost of transportation is what encouraged sprawl rather than density. Inexpensive land gave people motivation to sprawl, a motivation for which the natural check is the cost of transportation. The fact that we made transportation so cheap is what tipped the balance away from density and toward spreading out. Sure we would have still built roads and spread out. Just not nearly as much and not nearly so quickly. People are not “taxed out the wazzo” for their 3 acres and 90 minute commute. The fact is they don’t pay the costs associated with that choice of lifestyle. If people want to live in Lakeville and work in Minneapolis that’s fine. We just shouldn’t pay them to do so.
Planning and zoning are simply bad ways to deal with the side affects of stupid transportation policy. Both are often manipulated by those with vested interests and arbitrarily determine winners and losers when it comes to land values. I spend a lot of time working with developers and building projects across the country and have yet to run into a planning system that has not been corrupted. They also all institutionalize standards that are decades out of date and are almost impossible to fix. Not to mention the hundreds of work hours wasted for each project that goes to convincing some regulatory body that you would have the right to build on land you own.
All of your suggestions on how to get people to live in the urban core are only authoritarian methods to counter the affects of other bad policies. People would naturally create higher density communities, that could support transit without forcing other people to pay for it, if they saw the costs of a move 20 miles away from their office. Yes, it would be a regressive tax but so is the sales tax. Transportation is a core duty of our government but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be authoritarian or encourage bad behavior.
http://americanresearchgroup.com/economy/
Coleman has got a real problem. First of all, there’s his record. He can’t run from it, he can’t hide from it. It’s abysmal. He was chair of the committee that, historically, has been in charge of making sure corporations like Haliburton don’t engage in war profiteering. And he held how many hearings? Meanwhile, Haliburton has stolen billion, with a b, billions from US taxpayers. Heck of a job, normy. Second, there’s his personality. He is the most slimey, swarmy, phoney, empty suit on the planet. He literally makes people’s skin crawl whenever he makes an appearance. Third, he’s got no work ethic. A basically lazy, entitled, little boy who never really got anything through the effects of his own efforts. All in all, not a good forecast for corporate norm. His poll numbers will continue to decline as the campaign heats up. Every time Obama comes to Minnesota, Coleman’s numbers will drop by 5 points. Good riddance norm. Go find some think tank that will pay you an ridiculous amount of money to smoke weed and think deep thoughts.
Choo Choo! Now dat da Big L is in charge, me an’ Jason gonna ride dat free train down to da free health care clinic an’ get all fixed up.
I’m gonna get some of dem free ceramic crowns put on my teef, gonna look realy good like a movie star. Jason gonna finally get his head pulled out of his ass; he gonna look good too, real good.
Then we gonna go down to da free guvmint cheese store and have a nice lunch.
Not sure how many hobos have computers but with free WiFi popping up in the Metro, I suppose it could happen. Here’s the thing though, when health care becomes a more equitably shared cost, homeless people will be able to “get all fixed up” before they become critical. This will reduce the cost of their care by 7 to 20 times. When we stop spending the obscene amounts of money on guns and bombs we will be able to balance our budget and spend money on improving peoples lives, enableing them to become more contributing members of society. A progressive rennaissance is at hand.
Richard, I forgot to tell evrabody that in Minneapolis, the Big L has put in FREE computers with FREE internet in all of the FREE libraries!
And best of all, since the Big L has moved out all of them crummy corporations out to states that have crummy standards of living I don’t have to woik anymore, I got lots of FREE time to use all of the FREE stuff!
You right too. We won’t have to pay no $20 to see no doctor when the Big L reduces the cost to, yup, FREE! And after they fix evrabody up, them doctors gonna jump on the FREE train with us and eat FREE cheese and ride the rails all day long!
The big L gonna make us all members of rennaissance society contributing evrathing we got; it’s gonna be so sweet! Choo-Choo!
Hobo Joe,
Feel free to disagree with me all you want, when you couch it in racist terms, though, I just think you’re a bigot. Your opinion will matter when you can articulate it without falling back on a divisive and inaccurate stereotype.
Probably not alone in thinking that.
Choo choo!
Jason,
Why do you assume Hobo Joe is making fun of people from another race? He’s talking like hillbillies regardless of race. Your party makes fun of southern uneducated whites all the time.
As for your inane choo choo comment, I cannot believe you’re actually celebrating spending one billion dollars on a train between Minneapolis and St. Paul that will not help congestion anywhere on our freeway system. It’s yet another transit boondoggle that will not only cost our state dearly in the short run but also in the long run because the train will never pay for its operating costs and will have to be subsidized by the state general fund to the tune of millions of dollars a year. Argue that!
I, for one, cannot wait to ride the train from Minneapolis to St. Paul.
Choo Choo !!!!
I, for one, cannot wait to have a brand new BMW convertible. That does not mean that the taxpayers should foot the bill for what I want.
Dan: it’s called taking the bus and there are hundreds of times and routes to get you from Minneapolis to St. Paul. Honk Honk !!!!
Trains are fun to ride.
I support expansion of LRT not for that reason, but because I think it will alleviate the need for more roads in certain corridors. I also think that you cannot judge the cost benefit until you have just a little more of a build-out. How many people need to get from the airport to the metrodome? I think we’ll see system ridership increase with a couple strategically placed routes, and the cost-benefit ratios fall more into whack. Much like how we would never judge the usage of any other utility based only on one fraction of the entire system being operational.
With that said, however, the goal cannot be to blindly build an LRT system that is “fun to ride”, but continue to do cost-benefit analysis every step of the way to ensure the system is truly alleviating traffic problems in certain corridors.
I would ride LRT much more if it came within a reasonable distance of my home. It doesn’t. So I drive. To market observers, it appears I am freely choosing to drive my care instead of ride LRT. That is false. I am driving my car because it is the only market choice available to me at this time. (I happen to only have local bus service with only one stop per day).
Trains are absolutely no fun whatsoever.
“Isn’t this money we could be spending in Iraq instead?”, that’s what I’d be thinking about if I ever rode the god-damn train.
Think of the children!
DantheMan,
Your theory about trains, roads and a cost-benefit analysis would be good theory if only it were true. Even in places like Washington, D.C. there isn’t enough ridership paying enough money to pay for the cost of their Metro rail system. The difference between the Twin Cities and D.C., of course, is that they don’t have room to expand their roads because of geographic limitations, etc. We do have room to expand our roads and we can expand them at 1/81th the cost of building the light rail line. For what the DFL is proposing to spend on the Minneapolis-St. Paul line, we could have the finest bus system in the entire world.
Chris, I just about spit my coffee out laughing at your “honk honk” commment. Well played.
Yo Chris, I was wonderin’ ‘bout that one too but then I ‘membered that the big L always wants to know what colla a guy is, or if you is a guy even. Dat’s the mos’ important thing of all to da L!
See, da L gots ta know so’s da guvmint can rain down da gooood life to da right folks.
See, unless I says what was da colla of my momma an daddy, Jason gonna give me one ‘cause dat’s how it woiks.
We all gonna play dat when da Big L is in charge, or we not gonna get ta ride dem FREE rails all da day long, nor get none of dat FREE guvmint cheese!
So I’ll be what eva color is da good one wit da L today. Den we’re gonna ride. Choo-Choo!
Racial stereotyping? Check.
Claiming that calling him on the racial stereotyping is in fact the real racisim? Check.
Swiftee/BK, would you mind droping the Hobo Joe name and just post under your usual handle?
Whoowee, you got da nak for da big woids John!
Bad ting is dat I went to dem FREE guvmint schools and dey dint give us dat nak (an’ dem numbers, whooweee don’t talk ‘bout dem numbers!). But da L did give us FREE lunch and FREE bus rides!
So John, can you cut dem big woids down small enuf for a poor HoboJoe to read? I’m sure dey’s impointent!
Management?
I realize this thread is about to fall off, but I can’t let Chris’ comment go. Roads are not paid for by drivers (they are heavily subsidized) so why should the standard for LRT be different?
BTW - you did have a good point on the very first post. Citing Nick Coleman is worse than citing no outside sources.