Comments on: House Republican Caucus: Moderates Need Not Apply #9

By: House Republican Caucus: Moderates Need Not Apply #12 at MNpublius.com

House Republican Caucus: Moderates Need Not Apply #12 at MNpublius.com — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:41:32 +0000

[…] Kathy Tingelstad’s convention to postpone her endorsement, Deputy Chair Dorothy Flemming drove three hours to tell Republican activists to reject Rod Hamilton at the Cottonwood County Convention, and Deputy […]

By: Virtually Speakinig

Virtually Speakinig — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:12:31 +0000

And if we made our own TV sets, clothes, toys and pots and pans, we would not need roads from port cities like Duluth to population centers like Minneapolis / Saint Paul.

But no, we’ve given up much of our manufacturing base because foreign-made goods are cheaper per unit, even with the transportation costs added on.

And now we’re too cheap to want to pay for the transportation network and infrastructure that connects us to the global marketplace.

By: A Nony Moose

A Nony Moose — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:40:03 +0000

In Mockingbird’s world, you don’t get to choose where you live or where you go.

Why is it up to conservatives to sacrifice and not liberals? Why not give up making government bigger and bigger and socially engineering how we live?

Why is it so easy to ask someone else to give up their standard of living? The sense of entitlement and lack of personal accountability in today’s environment is a big part of our problem.

By: Mockingbird

Mockingbird — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:44:46 +0000

Just an observation:

If people gave UP their yards -
to live in concentrated high rises near the center of the city, instead of a Republican out-migration to the exurbs…

and stopping traveling to Duluth & other points outstate, to use the state’s resources…

Then there would be fewer roads needed. All could be spent on roads that will impress the party hacks coming for their convention.

Is there a cash incentive for the new 35w bridge, if they can have the ribbon cutting during the convention??

C’mon conservatives. Sacrifice!

By: Virtually Speakinig

Virtually Speakinig — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:34:46 +0000

According to Session Weekly of 22 Feb 2008, 9 percent of the road miles in
MN are part of the state trunk highway system.

One percent are in the Metro area.

27 percent of the traffic uses the 1 percent of the trunk.

59 percent is the state road miles traveled on trunk highways.

And now I’d like to know how former commissioner Molnau would have set the funding priorities for spending transportation money on the stretch of Hwy 60 where three people were killed in Rod Hamilton’s district since August 2007, or on the roads in between the GOP National convention site and the convention hotels.

And that, my metro friends, is why Deputy Dot got booed in Cottonwood County, after she invested over six hours and a $50 tank of gas to commute practically to Iowa to impress her leadership upon the good people of SD22B.

I hope she blew a couple of tires on the way home to Saint Anthony.

Yeah, Ron Carey should be worried about his job security, and so should Minority Leader Seifert. People want to be represented by someone that has their best interests as serving the greater good, not loyalty to a party.

By: Eva Young

Eva Young — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:08:19 +0000

What Seifert doesn’t mention is that the trunk highway funding formula favors the rural areas over the urban areas. The Twin Cities metro area has 60% of the population, but gets 25% of the trunk highway funding. This is nuts. And it’s totally irritating that the Minneapolis DFL legislators aren’t agressively trying to change this.

By: HoboJoe

HoboJoe — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:59:28 +0000

I got two questins.

1. What’s property taxes?

2. Can I get some catsup with them beans?

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:38:04 +0000

If you think your local property taxes will go down one dollar because of this massive tax increase, I’ll be glad to sell you my stockpile of magic beans.

By: boring

boring — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:10:06 +0000

I look forward to lower property taxes now that the Democrats have raised all these other taxes I’m paying.

By: Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:39:58 +0000

In response to Bobbi’s first note, the first issue with Marti’s assertion about transportation, is that here in St Paul everyone is paying a thousands in property taxes, a huge chunk of that goes for road maintainence of local streets: resurfacing, sweeping and plowing.
So the state share of city streets, are the state roads that outstaters use to come in to the cities for shopping and events. And we let them use local roads for free. Also a huge chunk of transportation funding comes from matching funds in federal money. I agree that it would be nice to have a good analysis.