Podcast 372

Memorial Day Weekend 2015. A midnight walk in the park, as we head into Memorial Day Weekend, 2015. As the country slows its roll for the big three-day weekend, it feels like the pace of the news is also slowing down. In the Upper Midwest, the big thing is opening the cabin, getting the RV ready to roll, and heading up to the lake. This is a weekend for putting in the dock, and establishing a ‘beach head’ for the summer. Some will be heading to state parks, others will be working, or hanging around the house. With a sense that people are slowing down for the weekend, the flow of news events also seems to be a bit stale. More stories about ‘candidates’ for presidential office, over a year away. More stories about things happening thousands of miles from the Upper Midwest. More blather about ‘Obama’, or ‘Clinton’, or ‘Jeb Bush’. In this podcast some observations from a day spent driving around the metro in gridlock traffic in search of parts – or a truck wash – for Mobile Podcast Command, visiting the ambulance supply warehouse, RV centers, and friends at various businesses around town. This driving around town thing is exhausting! After reading a thatch of news stories, taking a nap and dinner, time for coffee and a midnight walk through a deserted suburban town. Stories about summer’s and memorial day weekend’s past … the cold ones, and the hot ones. It is better to put the dock in when it is warm and sunny than it is to put it in when there is still ice floating on the lake. This year, the Upper Midwest has been lucky so far. It’s been a warm spring, and the forecast for the weekend is pretty good. Is it a good thing that there’s so much focus on Iowa for both political parties, this early? Events in other parts of the world continue, but things still don’t seem to have reached a point that requires decisions, or provokes new actions to debate. As summer comes on, it still feels like resolution on so many different news fronts will take a little longer. Maybe its a good time to pick out that summer novel. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Podcast 360

Updates! The Correspondent’s dinner is a colossal waste of time, and discussions now center on how to fix it. How do you fix it when the news reporters who should be in Baltimore covering riots are ‘the story’ at a glitzy, hollywood style celebrity roast, including the President. How is the public to expect objectivity in its nightly news given that kind of display. NBC Nightly News, as predicted, has reportedly asked Brian Williams to find the door as more evidence of his ’embellishments’ emerge. Williams has done irreparable harm to NBC News. The Comcast-Time Warner deal is kaput. It can only be hoped complaints about customer service at both companies contributed to it. It’s starting to become apparent that the balance of power, when it comes to energy, is shifting in favor of the United States. Fracking made it possible, and today’s technology made fracking so efficient oil companies can scale them up or down at much cheaper costs, and exploration is cheaper as well. With the US the second or first largest oil producer, and controlling as much as ten percent of the world’s oil production, substantive changes in middle east policy are now possible. The new reality also extends to how we deal with countries like Venezuela and Russia, not just the Middle East. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison wants to end so called subsidies to the ‘evil’ oil companies. What are subsidies, what tax breaks and loopholes specifically apply here and who really benefits? Meanwhile real subsidies for wind power, ethanol, electric cars, light rail and rail roads that deliver the oil – rather than the Keystone Pipeline – continue. Who benefits? The top selling car at GM is not a gas-electric, or even the fully electric Volt. It’s the Suburban, Yukon and Escalade as people trade in their electric cars for SUV’s, now that gas is cheaper. The war on the car, the individual and independent-government-free living continues. Latest in the struggle is the Southwest Light Rail project now expected to cost Minnesota Taxpayers 2 billion dollars, which shocked and appalled Governor Dayton. The solution? Kill the project. The aging hippie governor and his 60 year old pals at the Hennepin County Council, City Councils and a duchy known as ‘The Met Council’ have a vision. That vision is our return to the early 20th century city utopia, where cars were scarce and trains carried people from residential areas of big cities downtown. Forget that those cities, at that time, were hardly utopias. The last, best hope of these statists is the Millennial generation, which they expect will move into downtown, thus populating the expensive (1500 to 3000 a month) high rise apartments, and drinking in the bohemian bars and coffee shops, and in general contributing to something called ‘the creative class’. Truth is, Millennials are moving to the suburbs and the exurbs because housing is cheaper, and there are yards for their new families. Babies and toddlers don’t prefer sitting in outdoor coffee cafes, riding around on bikes and getting tattoos. Is the statist dream of returning to the early 20th century city doomed? Sponsored by X Government Cars

Podcast 346

Shore Power! Live from the Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8, now with Shore Power! As the power issue begins to resolve on Unit 8, we’re able to produce studio quality podcasts from the road … and try out the new coffee maker. Since everything now is powered up, that means the printer works and that means getting back into the news flow. The big story we’re watching is still the negotiations with Iran. Reportedly the US and the 5 (or 6) nations negotiating with Iran will sign a 3 page letter, after which economic sanctions will be lifted. But, it is also reported that Iran will be able to continue enriching uranium, and could be on a one-year path to having a nuclear weapon. Depending on who you read, or talk to, economic sanctions either worked, or didn’t. Considering the fact that Iran seems to be getting the best of the west, and especially the Obama administration in these negotiations, this looks like a major win for them. It also gives President Obama a ‘feather in his cap’ toward his legacy. Will an agreement with Iran produce long term problems in the middle east? Is this a good deal? Also percolating is the hysteria about Indiana’s new ‘religious freedom’ law. And, back in the Twin Cities (Editor’s Note: Remember I am in Scottsdale, Arizona right now) them fight over what the state pays commissioners and other ‘important’ state government functionaries continues. Meanwhile despite all the talk about millennials moving into hip downtown sections of decaying northern cities, new census data shows people moving to less dense suburban cities. How does this trend counter the standard sell of Light Rail, walkable cities, and downtown venues subsidized by taxpayers? The chair of the Met Council wasn’t supposed to get a 5 figure raise (from 61 thousand a year to 120+) but apparently he has. “It’s a full time job”, say those ‘in the know’, not a part time job. A part time job for 61 thousand a year? Nice. Getting a raise that almost doubles your pay, for any reason. Priceless. In any case, another example of a chief executive that simply ignore the legislature, whether it’s republican, or democrat. And about 100 residents of a Minnetonka apartment complex is suing the hated Met Council to stop the Southwest Light Rail. They say the train will ruin the peaceful atmosphere for biking and hiking behind the complex. What ruins LRT? That is the question. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating and Baklund R&D.