Category: News

City of St. Louis: "Can We Hold Your Bag, Mr. Wealthy Developer, Sir?"

Brian J. Noggle

Developer asks city to foot risk on office tower, mall:

A St. Louis developer is asking the city to back his purchase of the office tower that sits atop the St. Louis Centre downtown mall.

While it’s not unusual for the city to award tax breaks for downtown projects, what’s different in this deal is that the city would be putting it’s “full faith and credit” behind the development.

Normally, if a project fails, it’s the developer who’s liable. In this proposal, taxpayers would be responsible.

The city of St. Louis can’t afford to have decent schools or smooth roads, but it still feels the need to hump the leg of any developer that will contribute $1 private dollars against $10 public dollars for any cockamamie idea, like St. Louis Marketplace:

[Plan opponent St. Louis Comptroller Darlene] Green says there has been only one similar arrangement in the city’s history: the 1992 financing of the now desolate St. Louis Marketplace on Manchester Avenue. That agreement is still costing taxpayers more than $1 million a year.

Mayor Francis Slay regretfully endorses bullocks:

Slay said he endorsed the plan reluctantly, calling it the only way to complete renovation of St. Louis Centre.

“This particular piece of property is a cancer in downtown St. Louis,” Slay said of the office tower.

Twenty and a couple years ago, it was a shot in the arm for downtown St. Louis.

Deputy Mayor Barbara Geisman says, “Boondoggle or boondoggle; there is no nonboondoggle.”

“Nobody wants to do this, but circumstances are such that we really have no choice,” Geisman said.

The developer knows that downtown St. Louis is about at its saturation point for suckers, and that this development will only be a lottery ticket in case there’s no honest money to be made. I guess to a certain type of entrepreneur, the tick type, you have to try to suck whatever blood you can from the government hound.

Still, maybe it’s early, but here’s my prediction: in 2030, the biggest landowner in the city of St. Louis will be the city of St. Louis as it’s left with the derelict remains of its foolish and costly attempts to determine its own fate with sexy new sports teams and big, shiny, empty buildings at the expense of its infrastructure.

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View From The American Quagmire

Brian J. Noggle

In today’s news, an insurgent opened fire in a Chicago high rise today, killing several. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, the crumbling infrastructure continues to pose problems as parts of the metropolitan area suffer from a loss of power in the feared Midwestern winter, where temperatures drop beneath freezing. Corruption remains a problem, as government officials continue to work with the insurgency. Authorities disrupted one plot to blow up a shopping mall but were powerless to prevent a dramatic explosion in an industrial facility.

Take a handful of incidents from across a country, dash in some weighted words, and blend them together nicely, and I guess you can make any kind of meal you want.

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Civics Lesson from David Nicklaus

Brian J. Noggle

He says:

Brace yourselves, St. Louis. The convention industry is about to start beating the drum for another major expansion of the city’s meeting facilities.

There’s no official plan yet, just a consultant’s report. But that’s how these things start. A consultant identifies a problem, and pretty soon officials get busy figuring out what they can build to solve it.

And if that isn’t enough, I’d like to remind St. Louis that its football and hockey sports venues are now over a decade old, which means that they’re one championship and the attendent goodwill away from being obsolete enough to require publicly-funded replacement.

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Forget Pearl Harbor

Brian J. Noggle

Harry Levins of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch rationalizes why the newspapers help Americans forget historic anniversaries:

The bombs had barely stopped falling on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when Tin Pan Alley produced a tune that was eminently forgettable, except for its title:

“Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor.”

But today, precisely 65 years later, demography has determined that very few of us still “remember Pearl Harbor.”

Most of us have to be 5 years old before news events imprint themselves in our memory. And Census Bureau estimates drawn up last year show that only 26 million Americans are old enough to remember Pearl Harbor.

Funny. I think let’s remember Pearl Harbor is less a directive to think back to where we were than it is to work at not forgetting the lessons of history.

Never mind, there’s column inches to spend on Barry Bonds becoming a Cardinal.

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A Hipster Test

Brian J. Noggle

A new scientific experiment to determine the nature of hipsters:

Apple Computer Inc. may be cool and hip with consumers, but it’s anything but a trend-setter when it comes to good environmental policies, according to the activist group Greenpeace.

In its latest report on major electronics manufacturers, Greenpeace ranked Apple dead last on environmental issues because it still uses harmful chemicals in many of its products and because it does a poor job promoting recycling efforts for its iPods and other products.

If the hipster under study receives this news and changes to HP and Zune, he or she is genuinely concerned about the environment; if the hipster under study receives this news and continues with the Macs, iPods, and contributions to Greenpeace, the hipster only cares about appearances or his or her own creature comforts, with the money going to environmental causes as a sop to his or her own conscience. Or, I suppose, the person likes Apple stuff and thinks this is a cynical ploy by Greenpeace to increase donations by conscience-stricken materialist hipsters.

Aw, heck, I guess it could mean anything. I, Mr. Noggle, am a poor scientist. But that’s why I got an English degree.

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Sometimes Taxes Just Ain’t Enough

Brian J. Noggle

Milwaukee Public School seeks "donations":

Is it worth $300 a year for your child to go to the Milwaukee High School of the Arts?

A group of parents involved with the Milwaukee Public Schools’ specialty school is answering yes and has sent all the school’s parents a letter asking them to donate or raise that much per student to strengthen arts programming there.

Although the $300 is not a fee or a requirement, the campaign is about as close as a public school can come to making parents pay extra for activities that are part of the regular content of a school’s program and may be unprecedented in MPS.

Hey, how about firing a couple junior-level administrators?

No, instead, since the normal year-round student-centric fundraising isn’t doing it, how about making them come up with “donations.” We can be sure that students will continue to be chosen for this specialty school on talent, but it might not continue to be artistry in the future.

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Waiting for the Rioting

Brian J. Noggle

Crass commercial use of the image of a religious icon? Let the riots begin!

Plastic charge-card consumerism and yoga-minded, organic-eating activism — they seem to clash.

But there they are, fused in new Visa credit cards bearing such images as a meditating Buddha and sunlit hands folded in prayer.

Oh, wait, I guess we hold some religions and their adherents to a higher standard.

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In 360 Degree About Face, Wisconsin Governor Doyle Urges Higher Taxes

Brian J. Noggle

The headline: Doyle urges uniform sales tax rules: Governor, top aide say they will push national standards for third time. Sounds good, right? Why, the lead even makes it sound like he wants to level the playing field:

Gov. Jim Doyle and the top deputy he appointed Friday said Wisconsin must join the list of states that have agreed to uniform national standards for sales tax collections and promised to try a third time to get it through the Legislature.

Level-up the playing field, that is:

Doyle and Michael Morgan, whom the governor Friday named secretary of the state Department of Administration, said it is unfair that Wisconsin retailers have to charge 5% state sales tax to customers in their stores while those who buy over the Internet rarely have to pay the sales tax.

Wisconsin consumers don’t pay a sales tax on Internet purchases, and Doyle thinks that’s unfair to Wisconsin retailers.

Right. Doyle thinks that’s unfair to the Wisconsin state government which loses out on all that sweet, sweet tax revenue slush.

I mean, those commissions commissioned to recommending higher taxes don’t just pay for themselves.

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Feds Get Their Man

Brian J. Noggle

Kirkwood man charged with impersonating a Marine:

The FBI has arrested a Kirkwood man accused of impersonating a U.S. Marine and wearing a Navy Cross and other medals he did not earn.

Michael Gerald Weilbacher, 48, of the 200 block of Horseshoe Drive was arrested by FBI agents last night, the U.S. Attorney’s office said today.

So a guy puts on a uniform and goes to a ball to meet the chicks, and suddenly he’s in Leavenworth?

Pardon me for being a chickenhawk child of two Marines, brother to only one, but damn, doesn’t our federal law enforcement force (and its enabling Congress) have better priorities than to chase down false braggarts?

Well, our society has functionally eliminated shame as a deterrent/retributive factor (Michael Gerald Weilbacher, you’re a lying sissy), so some groups think its necessary to protect the sensitive feelings our former soldiers by incarcerating some nitwit.

Pardon me if I suspect that perhaps this stems from some symbolic gesture sop thrown to our veterans in place of actual, you know, respect for those who served.

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Always the Last Place You Look

Brian J. Noggle

Bodies of 3 family members found in Lemay home:

The bodies of three members of a Lemay family, missing since last week, have been found in the basement of their home, police sources said today.

Jeez, Louise, what, was it too spooky down there for the police to go down into the basement sometime last week after they shot dead the man who killed these people? This is Lemay, for crying out loud. If you stumble in the basement, you don’t fall flat on the floor.

UPDATE: This keeps getting more embarrassing for county cops; apparently, it was a family member who found the bodies.

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AP Headline Misses Critical Word

Brian J. Noggle

Headline: Honduras fines U.S. subsidiary over alleged mercenary training.

That’s odd, I didn’t realize that the United States of America had subsidiaries.

Oh, wait:

The Honduran government said Friday it has fined the local subsidiary of a U.S. company $25,000 for allegedly training more than 300 Hondurans and foreigners last year to work as mercenaries in Iraq.

Well, brevity is the soul of wit, headline writing, and negatively painting the big bad superpower inaccurately.

Reading the story, apparently the company was training people to work as security guards in Iraq, which means that I’ll have to start calling Rose, the desk guard at the building in which I work, a mercenary since that’s what the Honduran government would call her. But hey, free $25,000!

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Backers and Leaders Want Gravy Train

Brian J. Noggle

In Milwaukee, another unelected authority has revived another way to spend the public’s money: commuter rail:

As soon as next month, regional leaders could start discussing whether to get aboard a $237 million plan to link Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and the southern suburbs with commuter trains.

This is no doubt in addition to the light rail initiatives. Normally, this would be a problem with a plan, but since it’s a government authority, it’s no reason to pause:

Rail backers are touting the plan’s expected economic benefits, while the new Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority is wrestling with how to pay for the service.

If people wanted it, there would be a market for it, and perhaps a free market enterprise of some sort could provide it. But, nah, it’s all about featherbedding authority positions and salaries for the participants.

Kudos, though, to the plan’s originators. With full knowledge that there’s no funding in place, they’ve come up with a plan that’s even more expensive than the last one:

In its latest form, the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line, or KRM Commuter Link, would offer more frequent service and more stops – but at a higher cost – than the version that emerged from a previous study in 2003.

Man, I wish I were a quasi-government functionary, shuffling papers and preparing plan documents for an exhorbitant salary. Unfortunately, I am cursed with self-respect.

UPDATE: Owen of Boots and Sabers, more proximate to the impending fiscal train wreck than I am, weighs in.

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Britain To Reward Silent Killers

Brian J. Noggle

‘Big Brother’ cameras listen for fights:

The system works by putting microphones in CCTV cameras to continually analyze the sound in the surrounding area. If aggressive tones are picked up, an alarm signal is automatically sent to the police, who can zoom in the camera to the location of the suspect sound and investigate the situation.

“Ninety percent of violent cases start with verbal aggression,” Van der Vorst said. “With our system, the police can respond a lot quicker to a violent situation.”

Aggressive foreign powers can continue quietly poisoning dissidents, though.

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