If You Build It . . . You’re A Fool

Like a lot of small rural villages, Red Wing, MN has visions of grandeur that may be reflections of the town’s past or, more likely, are evidence that down-breeding has consequences. The current city bureaucracy and mismanagement have been hustling growth bullshit since the momentary burst in the area’s economy in the 70’s when Xcel’s Prairie Island Nuclear plant generated a substantial increase in the city and county population and tax base.Since the 70s, Red Wing has clearly suffered from a Field of Dreams syndrome, believing that if the city builds enough expensive crap people will finally be attracted to moving here and creating jobs and businesses that will make the dreamers look like actual planners. So far, if anyone is coming they must be the ghosts that populated that corn field baseball game in Costner's movie. They are very much invisible.

The city “planners” have been hacking away at a weird idea to convert the only significant riverside area of the city into some sort of “shopping district" and a misbegotten concert venue. The project name is the "Old West Main & Upper Harbor Renewal Project." The picture above is what the area looks like now and it is obvious that this is a grossly underused and somewhat unsightly waste of a prime Mississippi River location. The two videos below are concept renderings of the anticipated outcome of this multi-million dollar project in an economically disadvantaged area that has a mostly-abandoned downtown and a rapidly vanishing retail economic segment (like almost every small town in the country).

It’s a dream, obviously, and one based on a gross over-estimate of the city’s planning and development skills that could only be sustained if one were to ignore the long, expensive, and sad history of the city’s weird attempts to encourage growth, population-wise and economically. Currently, what businesses exist in the area are a couple of biker bars, some tiny and insignificant consumer retail businesses, a fair amount of small manufacturing, and some of the city’s scabbier housing units. Odds are, when the $3.5-5M are spent, if the city is lucky a few of those businesses will survive the customer and access problems caused by the grossly optimistic time schedule for the project. My bet is that there will be no more than one more restaurant in the area and several of the small manufacturing companies will either be forced out or will leave, probably Red Wing altogether, “willingly.” And the local citizens will be stuck with another large cost overrun bill, higher taxes, an enlarged and even more inefficient Public Works department that will do at least as poor a job of maintaining both the “pedestrian bridge” and the additional sidewalks as they do with the existing paths, sidewalks, and city parking areas. All of this as Xcel is likely to continue to decommission the property tax cash cow that has, in the past, funded every City Council pipedream and city planner's vanity “legacy” project since 1970.

In case you think I’m overstating Red Wing’s development past, here are a few examples of the city’s development track record. #1 the most recent (2017 through 2019) Spring Creek Road Project was promoted as being a business “starter” that would free up anticipated commercial real estate and increase business to existing businesses and to “to reduce traffic deaths along Highway 61.” That last bit was a pretty tough sell, since the next major intersection, which has all of the “features” the Spring Creek Road Project would bring to the Spring Creek/HW61 intersection is one of the city’s highest “impact points” for crashes and traffic deaths. 

This foolish project was, unbelievably, “20 years in the making.” Instead of accomplishing any useful goals, the city removed 3 supposedly desperately needed lower income duplexes and created two large, toxic-material-leaking and highly illegal junk yards and there have been some spectacular crashes at the new traffic light intersection.I’ve witnessed two of of those crashes while sitting on my bicycle at the intersection waiting for the “walk” light. Not to mention driving one of the city's grocery stores (Econofoods) out of business during the long project delays and due to the difficult access to the

 

This isn't the first time Red Wing has tried to "develop" Spring Creek Road along Highway 61. More than a decade ago, the city removed three houses from the southwest side of the street in a strange attempt to create a commercial section where there had been homes on a street that has about as much commercial appeal as a back alley in an abandoned mining town. Obviously, this was another waste of local taxpayer money and one from which the city learned nothing.

This might be my favorite Red Wing "development" failure. Anderson Park was obviously someone's pipedream of a recreational attraction to the city and for the half-dozen people who use the lower park it really can be a special place to hide out, walk the dog, experience a little mildly natural Minnesota flora and fauna, or start a ride on the Cannon River bicycle trail. Clearly, someone thought that would be a big draw because a buttload of money was spent on this park. 

Just as clearly, that someone had no idea that regular maintenance would be an issue in an area and facilities that would see the kind of use the design implied. Maintenance is not a Red Wing city skill. City sidewalks go the entire winter without seeing a single attempt at snow removal. Water faucets in the few areas where there is some tourist and local traffic almost always remain "out of order" all summer. And this bathroom was massively outside of the city Public Works' capabilities. The city can't even manage placing and maintaining trash cans at the more obvious tourist attractions. A public bathroom on a bicycle trail? What a pipedream. This building has been closed and a public reminder of city incompetence for more than a decade.

The Old Main Street and Harbor area where all of the upcoming and ongoing development disaster is just beginning is a reminder of the city's maintenance lethargy, too. Believe it or not, there is a sidewalk buried under the snow in this picture and that sidewalk remained buried from January to April in 2021, while the city was convincing taxpayers to add even more maintenance to ignore with the newest development disaster. There is almost a mile of this expensive sidewalk that gets ignored by the city all winter, every winter.

Even the newest addition to the upcoming project, the traffic circle and harbor trail, that hasn't been in place for five years and, as you can see by the footprints in the snow, gets used in spite of the city's inability to make even the slightest effort to keep the sidewalks safe to use. You know that giant footbridge is going to be everything from an accidental deathtrap to a suicide launching pad and I'm sure the city will act surprised when the first city budget-crushing liability lawsuit is filed.

And my all-time favorite Red Wing boondoggle happened long before I arrived in Red Wing and, maybe, before we moved to Minnesota in '96. This retaining wall must have cost the city a half-million dollars or more and if it had a development purpose, it failed miserably. My picture doesn't convey how massive this retaining wall is. There are thousands of large retaining wall blocks in this thing and the lot it "protects" is idiotically small and impractical for any serious development. It is for sale, if you are interested, though. Beyond that, there is about 1/2 mile of marginal "condos" and apartments along this frontage road. The development cost to local taxpayers will take a couple centuries to recover. The city owns acres of undeveloped land and various abandoned "business" and industrial properties repossessed over the years due to unpaid taxes. In the right light, Red Wing could become the next great place for apocalypse or zombie movies: just add dead people and/or zombies.

In another burst of irrational optimism, in 2019 the city spontaneously decided to blow $3,655,200 (estimated cost and probably a fraction of the final bill) on a 2nd fire station on the sparsely populated west end of the village. The idea was that adding a dozen fire fighters and a multi-million dollar fire station would shorten the response time by about 5 minutes, at best. Curiously, there was a west end fire station that closed in the 1970s. That must have been a brief burst of actual conservative financial planning for the city that has since been solidly squashed by the "if you build it" nonsense. In a few years, this building will be one more monument to unrestrained municipal spending,
"irrational exuberance," and apathetic and uneducated taxpayers. Whoopee!

If this story and series of pictures does not make you want to hire Red Wing's City Council and the City "Engineer" for your next development project . . . good for you. Personally, with my money I wouldn't employ anyone associated with Red Wing's city government to run a kids' lemonade stand. 

So, with all of this insanity, why would anyone consider living in Red Wing, let alone moving there. There is one gigantic, overwhelming, massively impressive feature of Red Wing, Minnesota: the Red Wing branch of the Mayo Clinic. The majority of Red Wing's incoming citizens (and out-going, for that matter) are healthcare workers and the senior citizens and retirees they are here to serve. We come to Red Wing because of the incredibly high quality healthcare the Mayo Clinic provides to an otherwise very isolated and under-served area. Lose the Mayo and I'd bet half of us would have our houses and condos up for sale by the end of the first year. There are at least 100 places my wife and I would rather live, but none of them have anything near the quality of healthcare services of the Mayo Clinic. I know of at least another dozen couples, our age, in town who are here for exactly the same reason. Yeah, the Mississippi River valley is picturesque, but the weather sucks 10 months out of every year, and the working-age population are unskilled and uneducated and as racist and foolish as the January 6th Goober Rioters. A substantial portion, the overwhelming majority, of the new construction in town are apartments near the Mayo Clinic.  If that isn't a scary fact for the future of the village, you are either a fool (and highly qualified to serve on Red Wing's City Council) or someone who doesn't care what happens to the town in a decade or two when that big rat passing through the bull snake economy (aka "Boomers") dies off and the places is left with hundreds of expensive and empty condos and apartments and dozens of over-priced/over-sized housing units. It's going to be scary for someone, but not us. We'll be dead. I've been in the situation that the two or three generations behind us will be in before. In the 1970s, I bought a large, older home in Fremont, Nebraska in 1976. By 1978, the Nebraska farm economy had been crushed by Vietnam War-caused inflation and the town's major employers, ag-based manufacturing (like my employer), died like they had been shot in the heart. When we moved to Fremont, there were no more than a total of a half-dozen houses for sale in a 20,000 population town. When we were forced to sell after I was laid-off, there were hundreds of houses desperately up for sale. Not having any real attachment to the area was a big advantage for us. I sold the house for a substantial (for us, at the time) loss, but I got out without having to declare bankruptcy, suffer foreclosure, or being stuck with a house payment without employment for an extended period. So many people we knew went the other route, because Fremont was "home" to them and they didn't feel they had the luxury to abandon the place while the ship-jumping was good; or as good as it would get for the next 20 years or more. I have a strong sense of déjà vu these days in Red Wing. This time, however, I don't have my life savings tied up in a house. I don't have a young career and a young family to manage, but for those who do these should be very nervous times.

When Chaos Is All You Can Create

For the past 5 years (and a lot more) many of us have wondered “what are they thinking” as Trump’s Marching Morons and many of the Republican Party have gone from one attempt at social destruction to the next. The end game for these people appears to be the total breakdown of anything that might resemble organized society and a libertarian free-for-all. When you look at the faces of the January 6th Heehaw Rebellion you have to assume that none of those people are able to sustain any sort of serious relationships or jobs. The hoard of stay-at-home moms, angry and unemployed Millennials and X-gens and Boomers, retired and active duty military and police, and the rest of that crowd of people who have never had a productive, useful moment in their lives has to make you wonder “what do they think will come of the mess they are trying to make?”

The answer is chaos. They live in a delusional world where they imagine that when order and civilization fails, they will come out on top. And the fact is, they might; for a while. The mislabeled “rebels” in places like Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and the world’s other hot spots of disorder and instability, plus many members of almost every country’s military and police, are not serving some greater good in their fight. They are simply taking advantage of the opportunities chaos creates. Since they have no useful purpose in an organized 21st Century culture, they are trying to drive back progress and civilization to a point where they would at least be able to have a few moments of pleasure out of arson, theft, murder, rape, and kidnapping. It’s not like any of these people have a long-range plan for their life’s purpose.

The problem is that there are so many of them. In fact, it is entirely possible that at least half of every nation in the world is filled with what was once nothing more than cannon fodder for pointless regional wars and territorial pissing matches. A few thousand to a few hundred years ago, “excess population” (mostly male) was easily eliminated with hand-to-hand combat in large scale relative to overall population. A Bronze Age battle from 3200 years ago was discovered in the 90s and the grisly remains have been . . . enlightening. The remains of a few hundred expendables have been dug up, which indicates that at least 4,000-5,000 were involved. According to a Science Magazine article, this describes “picture of Bronze Age sophistication, pointing to the existence of a trained warrior class and suggesting that people from across Europe joined the bloody fray.” It also provides evidence that humans have needed to slough off excess and mostly-useless young men on a regular basis. One of the side effects of a large invading army is that a fair number of equally unproductive young women get used up, as hookers, rape victims, and camp hangers-on. So, all sorts of useless humans get used up relatively quickly.

In modern society, we don’t have a mechanism for ridding cultures of excess mediocrity, unless the culture collapses into chaos. Syria, for example, was the post card example of a moderately-functional Arab state. Then it wasn’t and the gangbangers have been having a field day since. That is the kind of “state” that Republicans appear to think will keep them in power and money, indefinitely, and for a few of them that will be true and for the majority, like the rest of us, they will discover the cost of “reaping the whirlwind.”

When your long-range “plan” is to wildly hope that a mobster faux-millionaire who has never done anything in his life to benefit anyone but himself, blowing up the world might seem like that act would create “new opportunities” that won’t exist any other way.

Republican Jokes

I know, that title probably looks redundant. It probably is. However, in the last 40 years it has become increasingly obvious that almost every ethnic, mental status, stupid boss, and location joke ever written can now be easily converted to a “Republican joke.”

Here are some examples, and be honest, you know every one of these modified jokes works as it stands here:

Q: What do you do if a Republican throws a pin at you?

A: Run like hell - he's still got a hand-grenade between his teeth.

 

Q: What do you do if a Republican throws a hand-grenade at you?

A: Take the pin out and throw it back.

 

Q: How do you know if a Republican has been using a computer?

A: There's whiteout on the screen.

 

Q: How did the Republican mother teach her son which way to put his underwear on?

A: Yellow in the front, Brown in the back!

 

Q: How do you know you're flying over a Red State?

A: Toilet paper hanging on the clotheslines.

 

Q: Why do Republican names end in "ski" ?

A: Because they can't spell toboggan.

 

Q: Did you see the Republican submarine with a screen door?

A: Don't laugh, it keeps the fish out.

 

Q: Did you hear about the Republican Helicopter crash?

A: The pilot got cold, so he turned off the fan.

 

Q: How do you sink a Republican battleship?

A: Put it in water.

 

Q: Why did the Republican put ice in his condom?

A: To keep the swelling down.

 

Q: What happened to the Republican hockey team?

A: They all drowned in spring training.

 

Q: Why don't Republican women use vibrators?

A: It chips their teeth.

 

Q: Why did the Republican cross the road?

A: He couldn't get his dick out of the chicken.

 

Q: Why are there no Republican doctors?

A: Because you can't write prescriptions with a crayon.

 

Q: What’s the difference between a smart Republican and a unicorn?

A: Nothing, they're both fictional characters

 

Q: Did you hear about the winner of the Republican beauty contest?

A: Me neither.

 

Q: Why wasn't Christ born in A Red State?

A: Because they couldn't find three wise men or a virgin.

 

Q: How did the Yankees conquer the South so fast?

A: They marched in backwards and the Confederates thought they were leaving.

 

Q: How do you tell which is the groom at a Republican wedding?

A: He's the one with the clean tee-shirt.

Q: How do you get a Republican out of the bath tub?

A: Throw in a bar of soap.  

 

Q: Why are there no ice cubes in a Red State?

A: They forgot the recipe.

 

Q: What happens when a Republican doesn't pay his garbage bill?

A: They stop delivering.

 

Q: How do you ruin a Republican party?

A: Flush the punch bowl.

 

Q: What happened to the Republican National Library?

A: Someone stole the book.

 

Q: Why did the Republican couple decide to have only 4 children?

A: They'd read in the newspaper that one out of every five babies born in the world today is Hindu.

 

Q: What did the Republican mother say when her daughter announced that she was pregnant?

A: "Are you sure it's yours?"

 

Q: Why did the Republican sell his water skis?

A: He couldn't find a lake with a hill in it.

 

Q: What do Republican athletes do with their gold medals?

A: Go home and got them bronzed.

 

Q: Did you hear in the news that a 747 recently crashed in a cemetery in a Red State?

A: The Republican officials have so far retrieved 2000 bodies.

 

Did you hear about the Republican family that froze to death outside a theater?

They were waiting to see the movie "Closed for the Winter."

 

An English guy is driving with a Republican as his passenger, when he decides to pull over because he suspects that his turn signal may not be working. He asks the Republican if he doesn't mind stepping out of the car to check the lights while he tests them. The Republician steps out and stands in front of the car. The English guy turns on the turn signal and asks, "Is it working?"

To which the Republican responds, "Yes, it's working....No, it's not working....Yes, it's working....No, it's not working...."

 

Did you hear about the terrible automobile accident in Georgia last night? A Republican family on vacation lost all of their children. The pickup truck they were riding in ran off the road into a lake and sank to the bottom. The parents got out of the cab OK but all the kids in the back drowned...they couldn't get the tailgate open.

 

Three men are traveling in the Amazon, a Socialist, a Democrat, and a Republican, and they get captured by some natives. The head of the tribe says to the Socialist, "What do you want on your back for your whipping?"

The Socialist responds, "I will take oil!" So they put oil on his back, and a large Amazon whips him 10 times. When he is finished the Socialist has huge welts on his back and he can hardly move.

The Amazons haul the Socialist away, and say to the Republican, "What do you want on your back?"

"I will take nothing!" says the Republican, and he stands there straight and takes his 10 lashings whimpering and bawling like a baby.

"What will you take on your back?" the Amazons ask the Democrat. He responds, "I'll take the Republican!"

 

A popular bar had a new robotic bartender installed. A guy came in for a drink and the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?"

The man replied, "130." So the robot proceeded to make conversation about physics, astronomy, and so on. The man listened intently and thought, "This is impressive."

Another guy came in for a drink and the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?"

The man responded, "110." So the robot started talking about the superbowl, dirt bikes, and so on. The man thought to himself, "Wow, this is really cool."

A third guy came in to the bar. As with the others, the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?"

The man replied, "80."

The robot asked, "So, which Red State are you from?"

 

A Republican is hired to paint the lines on the road. On the first day he paints ten miles, and his employers are amazed. But, the second day he painted just five, and on only the third day, he painted only a mile of the road. Disappointed his boss asks what the problem was. The Republican replies, "Well sir, every day I have to walk farther and farther to get back to the paint bucket."

 

Three prisoners, an bank robber, a car thief, and a Republican, are scheduled to be executed by firing squad. They bring out the bank robber and stand him in front of the pole. He points and shouts, "Tornado!" They all look and the bank robber runs away.

Next, they place the car thief in front of the firing squad. He yells "Earthquake!" They all hit the dust and the car thief escapes.

Next up is the Republican. He shouts "Fire!"