Heller: 8% of the Mpls budget is for Police and 4% is for Fire protection. That totals a whopping 12% spent for public safety -- a shameful pittance.
The largest expenditure in Minneapolis is actually corporate welfare, real estate developer subsidies, and related debt service. I don't understand why Listpeople continue fiddling with minutia while the
City is crumbling under the weight of its debt. Ten years worth of "economic development" has been a monstrous failure - and now the credit card slips are coming in by the truckload.
Mork: I thank Ms. Heller for her comment. She may be aware than I'm not a screaming, raving FAN of subsidies for business projects. But, again, it is not the AMOUNT, it is not the PRIORITY, of the spending that is my focus right now. It is the logical connection between the spending and the RESULT that I address. Police attacks on unconvicted citizens does not creater A SAFER CITY. A penny is too much spent when it reduces the safety of citizens. A much LARGER expenditure than today is not too much spent when the expenditure enjoys SOME relationship with its goal. One can only hope that somewhere behind that defensive shield that the MPD hides behind, there is some realization that we citizens don't APPRECIATE the "help" they sometimes give the criminal community in making this a less safe place to live. We don't invite our guardians in blue in from their suburban retreats to shoot us and beat us up.
Subpoenas: This is a sub-section of the overall subject. I think the confidence-building change that could take place with these allegations of police offense would be to take it AWAY from city police and residents. Let an outside objective party investigate. I've seen some investigations done by Dakota county (thought not of Minneapolis issues). But couldnt the County Attorney assign someone? I think since I help pay county taxes, I'd like to see a desk created at the county level JUST to investigate city police officers when the need arises. The County Attorney should ALREADY have subpoena power.
Email Volume: Uh, well, gee if you're going to have nearly 900 people on your list, that will generate quite a bit of messages, even at two a day. Maybe it isn't the volume HERE so much as the overall volume of email everyone gets. I've had requests not to forward stuff off the web because people can't keep up. My conclusion: This is not a "Minneapolis-list-specific" problem.
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Jim Mork
Cooper Neighborhood
"America better beware of a candidate who is willing to stretch reality inorder to win points." George Bush, September 2000, quoted in The Press Effect, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 53
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