David Trinh

Tonight Minnesota’s political contribution refund (PCR) will cease to be, having been cut off from funding and left to wither on the vine by Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment scheme.  I’ve spent this past week rounding up last minute donations from friends and family, some of whom, in the absence of the PCR, will no longer be able to support their favored candidates because of financial difficulties.

The death of this program is tragic.  The PCR was a hallmark of honest Minnesotan politics which eschewed big money donors in favor of a system that stressed small donations (a maximum refund of $50 per person was offered) from a broad swath of voters regardless of class.  Unfortunately, with the abolition of the PCR, it’s likely that more and more candidates will opt to forgo public financing all together (the public subsidy of around $6500 for most House candidates probably won’t be sufficient to keep many in the program which also carries spending and donation limits).  It’s very possible that 2010 will see an explosion in the amount of big dollar fundraising for State House campaigns.  The public subsidy and PCR were sufficient to keep many from going over spending limits and dumping many thousands of dollars into races; now, with the elimination of one of these subsidies, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw an increasing number of State House races which cost over $30,000—a figure that necessitates raising money from wealthy donors who likely won’t be constituents.

The PCR was a good program.  It made politicians reliant on small dollar donors who otherwise would have been ignored.  It also allowed people of modest means to secure a stake in the political process that they ordinarily would not have been able to afford.  Hopefully, the program will be reinstated in a future budget—and really, this shouldn’t be a partisan issue, as it’s my understanding that Republican candidates actually collect more from PCR checks than Democrats—but for the time being Minnesota is losing one of the programs that keeps our politicians honest and our elections clean.

The big story of the day in Minnesota is obviously Franken’s triumph over Coleman at the MN Supreme Court, a victory which Democrats hope will finally cement their 60 vote filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate.  Once you delve a little deeper into this case though, it’s not immediately clear that this victory will change the legal limbo in which Franken has found himself.  Notably, the Supreme Court decided to forgo directly ordering Gov. Pawlenty to sign an election certificate that would seat Franken, instead the Court simply suggested that Franken was ‘entitled’ to his certificate.

Essentially, this means that Minnesotan voters will get representation when Pawlenty and Coleman are good and ready to give it to them.  Without a direct order to sign the election certificate, Coleman is free to appeal his case to the US Supreme Court, litigation that could drag on into September.  However, while I’m relatively confident that Coleman could prolong this dispute even longer if he wanted to, I doubt he will choose to do so.  (Yes, I know this prediction will be moot in about a half an hour when Coleman gets in front of the cameras for his press conference.)

I say this only because over the past few weeks Republicans have been largely silent about this contest.  Everyone knew Coleman was going to lose his legal challenge in front of the Minnesota Supremes—a fact underscored by the unanimous decision in Franken’s favor—so one would think that if Republicans intended to keep fighting they would have been softening Franken up for a challenge to his credentials on the floor of the Senate or a show battle at the US Supreme Court.  It’s an understatement to say the GOP lately has tended to be rather shrill over partisan issues such as this one, so my hunch is their silence betrays their own belief that Norm Coleman is about to give up the fight.

Matt Yglesias responds to a piece I read in the Times this morning about a nationwide glut of stadium space:

Charles Bagli has an interesting piece in the New York Times about metropolitan areas suffering from a glut of arenas. He leads with the case of New York City, but the most clear-cut example is probably one he gets to later, Minneapolis. They have the Target Center in Minneapolis and a separate Excel Energy Arena in St. Paul for the NHL’s Wild. Meanwhile, “Both sites are losing money, and they must also compete with the University of Minnesota, which has two arenas.” On top of all that, Minneapolis just isn’t an especially large metropolitan area.

This is too bad. Unlike a football stadium, an indoor arena really can serve as an important element in neighborhood revitalization. That’s because an arena fits relatively comfortably into the urban landscape and also because, in principle, an arena can be used on a high proportion of days. But of course to get a high usage rate, you need to pack a bunch of different things—NBA, NHL, maybe a WNBA or Arena Football, concerts, etc.—all into one space. Splitting it up among two or three not only creates money-losing arenas, but deprives the arena neighborhood of the critical mass of foot traffic that can turn it into something worthwhile.

Exactly.  I would add that not only is this problem bad but it’s going to get even worsewhen Target Field, the new Twins stadium, opens in the warehouse district next year.   When the Twins leave the Metrodome (another facility which both the Times and Yglesias neglect to mention) will be deprived of one of its biggest clients.  To top all that off, the Vikings too are begging for a stadium, so it’s entirely possible that the Twin Cities will soon have five massive arenas serving a metropolitan area which is much, much smaller than New York City.  If New York can’t support this many arenas, I don’t see how Minneapolis and St. Paul can possibly fill the same number of seats. 

In brief, this is why I believe it is extremely irresponsible for municipalities and other levels of governments to involve themselves in large commercial development projects.  If the Twins need a new stadium, then the owners of the team should front the money and pay for it themselves.  Instead the taxpayers of Hennepin County are subsidizing a massive public works project (to the tune of $392 million), a project which is less than germane to the public’s welfare. 

Look, big shiny new buildings are certainly sexy; however, the government’s job is not to support huge entertainment complexes, especially when such support gets in the way of arguably more important things like public safety and road repair.  Further, not only are projects like this outside of the scope of government but, more often than not, government actually does a pretty poor job of encouraging the right kind of development: the most strikingly egregious example of intervention obviously being the Block E in downtown Minneapolis (seriously, go read the Yelp reviews for this place– they’re a riot).  If there is a bright side to any of this it is that Target Field is being built right next to both the failed Target Center and the apocalyptically awful Block E, so at the very least this new urban hellhole will be contained to a few sad square blocks.

Over at The Quick and the Ed, via Yglesias, Kevin Carey bemoans the lack of information about the quality of education at colleges, a knowledge deficit that he argues prevents students and parents from choosing the right educational institution:

[L]et’s say I was trying to choose the right college for my (non-existent) 17-year old daughter. And let’s say I’m the perfect higher education consumer from the academy’s perspective–I don’t care at all about climbing walls or fitness centers or luxury dorms or any of that stuff. I care about all the truly important things I’m supposed to care about: the quality of the teaching, scholarship, and academic environment, how the school will help my daughter become an enlightened, ethical, fair-minded public citizen.

How would I choose? Where would I get that information, in a way that would allow me to decide among hundreds of alternatives? Answer: nowhere, because it doesn’t exist. Colleges may complain about having to market themselves based on dorm-based pilates studios and whatnot, but it’s not like they have some other secret brochure in a filing cabinet somewhere, filled with all the real information about the true meaning of higher education, materials that they would gladly distribute far and wide if only students weren’t so coddled by their helicopter parents and addled by the rap music and the video games.

In fact most colleges don’t systematically gather this kind of information, or if they do–via the National Survey of Student Engagement or something similar–they don’t release it to the public. Yes, yes, colleges are lot more complicated than televisions. But nobody can say with a straight face that colleges are doing nearly as much as they could to provide consumers with information about teaching and learning that’s useful for making consumer choices–that is, presented in a way that allows for institutional comparisons.

Color me confused.  Has Carey ever glanced at the US News College rankings or browsed through theU.com?  True, these two sources don’t provide a complete picture of the caliber of a school’s academic regimen; however, the factors that do go into compiling the rankings for US News certainly aren’t things like ‘dorm-based pilates studios.’  Rather, these rankings are created by using statistics such as graduation and retention rates, as well as factors such as faculty resources and peer assessment—presumably the sort of data that Carey is clamoring for.

Moreover, I’d like to note that Carey’s imaginary daughter is really going to be in for a rude awakening if she bases her admissions decision solely on ‘objective’ characteristics such as the quality of “teaching, scholarship[s] and [the] academic environment.”  Sure, these things matter but it’s also important to go to a school with which you can jive.  I’m reluctant to single any particular school, but I can say from first hand experience that the social environment in college is just as, if not even more, important to the success of your education than the hard statistics of educational quality.  Alas, such information is difficult to distill into data that ‘perfect higher education consumers’ can easy use.

Fortunately, the system that we have for selecting colleges which uses admissions requirements and standardized testing (dont’ want to get in over your head), college visits (check out the scene, make sure you can make friends) and college rankings (a sprinkle of objective commentary about the ability of the school to land you a job on Wall Street) works pretty well and I don’t think we need to cry wolf about a shocking lack of educational statistics being provided to would-be college students.

A few weeks ago I was asked for pizza recommendations by some fellow Yalies who in Minnesota this summer working at internships around the Twin Cities.  Specifically, these Elis asked whether Pizza Luce was a good choice.  “No, No, No!”  I exclaimed, an outburst which was followed by a savage denunciation of Pizza Luce for its low-quality, over-priced and generally uninspired pies.  Needless to say, my fellow interns were a little taken aback, and perhaps thought I had taken my critique a bit far.  In my defense though, according to Minnesota Monthly, I’m not pretentious about pizza, I’m just Minnesotan:

Some think Minnesota Nice is the quality of helpfulness that arose from people living together through unforgiving winters, but we all know it’s really the frosty détente that has evolved from 4 million people stuck together around some lakes trying not to tell one another: “Your favorite pizza is beneath contempt.”

Indeed, we do take our pizza seriously here!  Personally, I’m partial to the Neapolitan pizza served up by Bricks, Punch or Pizza Nea and in a pinch will settle for a pie from Black Sheep.  Of course while reasonable minds can disagree about pizza, just as they can disagree about any restaurant, I really do think that there are some truly bad options in Minneapolis.  Pizza Luce is near the bottom of the list for selling heavy, flavorless monstrosities which push $20 a piece and Galactic Pizza also warrants a mentions for producing some truly objectionable pie.

Anyway, if you want to find something that suits your palate, head on over to Minnesota Monthly’s pizza personality quiz to get a recommendation for yourself (and don’t fear, neither Luce nor Galactic are recommended for anyone). Interestingly enough, I got pegged as ‘the observer’ which evidently means I believe “life with low standards isn’t worth living.”  Too true.

Adultery is bad but as far as sins go, Matt Yglesias is right; it’s not the greatest crime in human history.  In purely utilitarian terms, Sanford’s decision to turn down stimulus money funding schools, higher education and public safety hurt far more people than his fling with an Argentinean mistress.   Still, there’s another moral dimension to this story that is particularly irksome—Sanford’s bold-faced hypocrisy on ‘family values.’

As a member of congress, Sanford castigated President Clinton for his infidelity, calling his behavior reprehensible, and urged the President to resign.  While the circumstances in these two affairs are different—Clinton lied under oath and Sanford ‘merely’ lied to his wife—Sanford himself seemed to believe that lying to one’s wife is just as improper as lying under oath: “But the bottom line is, he still lied. He lied under a different oath and that is the oath to his wife.”  All this rank hypocrisy makes me wonder if politicians (at least the male variety) wouldn’t be better off declining to comment on the personal lives of their peers.

As satisfying as righteous indignation can be, I really don’t see any political benefit that comes from slamming your adversaries for adultery.  Everyone knows that the perpetrator blundered; the offender knows that he did wrong—what good comes from pointing this out to the body politic?  Moreover, not only is public grandstanding about infidelity unproductive but it really seems that a person’s personal life ought to be sheltered from the public domain, even if they’re a high-ranking official.  Sanford may have sinned but neither he nor his family deserves to have his love letters to his mistress displayed for the entire world to mock.

Governor Barbour did the right thing by refusing to comment on Sanford’s personal life.  Not only do Sanford and his family deserve privacy, but given the tendency of politicians to practice what they publicly condemn, it’s also probably the wisest political move.

Now would be a good time for Mark Sanford to flee the country.

Cool:

Travel and Leisure Magazine has published its 10 Top Biking Cities in the world and Minneapolis is one of only three in the United States to make the cut.

Portland, Oregon, and Seattle also made the list.

Endorsing Minneapolis’ bike-friendliness, the magazine noted: “Like many of the world’s best biking cities, Minneapolis has built an infrastructure that promotes bicycling on many fronts. From bike lockers and designated street lanes to recreational trails and snowplows dedicated to clearing off-street paths, a system exists to make transportation on a bike efficient, safe, and hassle-free.”

I’m somewhat surprised that the Twin Cities made this list, simply because if you actually bike in Minneapolis/St. Paul you quickly realize that the abysmal drivers more than balance out the well-developed biking infrastructure.

Richard Posner is a pretty smart guy, so I was surprised when he offered up this doozy in a piece about the future of the newspaper industry:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Wow.  That’s a long sentence.  And, in my opinion, it’s also a rather dumb sentence.  After all, how have online news sources that barred links or put content behind walls faired over the past few years?  With the exception of the Journal, I can’t think of many news sources that have had luck with a subscriber based model.  Salon.com tried that for a while, of course, but nearly went bankrupt in the process until they settled into an imperfect, but much improved, semi-open model.

Business model concerns aside, Posner’s proposals are wildly impractical.  How would one actually go about enforcing an ‘[expansion of] copyright law to ban online access… without the copyright holder’s consent?’  I, for instance, link to news sources such as the Times and have a very small reader base-does Posner think the Times would actually have enough legal resources to bother suing me if I illegally post a NYT article?   What is the cutoff for legal action?  And, what became of ‘fair use?’  Further, the standard for copyright infringement that Posner sets is impossibly vague.  If I use the phrase ‘according to the New York Times,’ would I be illegally ‘paraphrasing copyrighted materials?’  Questions abound.

The newspaper industry is going through a transition, one that promises to be painful, and the business model for reporting on news is obviously going to have to evolve to meet the challenges posed by internet distribution.  However, the answer to these challenges is not to fight back against the way the modern world consumes news.  Blogs and online commentary are here to stay, and the solution to the newspaper industry’s woes cannot involve the destruction of these new forums for discussion.

Via TPM, The State reports that Gov. Mark Sanford, who went missing for five days, has returned to South Carolina after a jaunt to Argentina.  When asked why he decided to go to Buenos Aires, he replied that “I wanted to do something exotic.”

Too true, Buenos Aires is exotic!   I do have to wonder though, why the Governor decided to go to such a beautiful city during the dead of winter (although, to be fair, the highs during June in Buenos Aires hover around sixty degrees).  If Mark would have asked me for travel recommendations, I instead would have heartedly recommended a trip to Iceland, a great destination year around.  Not only does Reykjavik have beautiful scenery, gorgeous people and a wonderful bar scene but you can also sample puffin, reindeer and whale meat.  An exotic locale with exotic meats-really, what more could you ask for?

(A handsome man eating Mink whale in Reykjavik)