Well, last week we weighed in on local issues, specifically the proposed annexation. This week is Mother’s Day, and we expect a light turnout. So I’ll be there with the truly dedicate, and we’ll just talk without a hard agenda. It’s Dealer’s Choice at the next Politics and a Pint!

We mostly talked about City process and especially recent power struggles within the City Admin staff.  It seems clear that there is an undercurrent of issues flowing beneath the deceptively calm surface here in this little village on the Cannon.

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: Sunday, 11 May 2008, 6-7:30PM

We will be talking about the pending land-grab as Northfield seeks to obtain more lebensraum from the peaceful farming communities to the west. All of this will be a continuation of our last meeting, as we track the hot topic events here in Northfield. We may ask the hard questions, we may reach the hard conclusions, but we’ll not be deterred by the difficulties nor intimidated by the answers. Bring your maps, bring your thoughts and we’ll take a snapshot of the local thoughts. Let’s see what develops, at the next Politics and a Pint.

Well, we had an interesting talk, the image at the left is the white board where I kept notes. Click for a full size image.

The consensus was consistent with last week, when we concluded that the city is suffering from a serious lack of transparency in its dealings, perhaps not from malice, but more likely from just being overwhelmed by events. There seems to be a lot of time being spent following a process that is not well understood up front, and that therefore gives us a bad case of “what just happened?”

More details (as seen in the photo and supplemented by my notes:

Pro (n= Tax base. We are unashamedly in favor of more industrial and commercial because they pay more than they consume in public services housing uses more than it pays for, and needs the supplementing from the other sector(s). Not a hostile takeover. Right now there are landowners (3) and developers (2) who are willing to be annexed. the landowners may pay a slightly lower tax in the city as ag. they will be just that much closer to being “shovel ready” (more later on that) Why 530 acres? We heard that light industrial (in particular) is very much concerned that they be part of a good chunk of land so that noise, dust, trucks coming in and out won’t be a problem for housing nearby. The fact that 100+ acres might be undevelopable wetland is not a problem since even undeveloped wetlands help provide a buffer. Excess housing. We may have overbuilt in the housing department (where are the figures on that question?) Get control now. The city can better control what happens there if it is already in the city.

Con (n=1) Process. What happened here? Who was on first? We are still disappointed with the inability of staffs to keep the public informed on the state of the process. Where is the 30,000′ view? There is no assurance that the city can maintain control. A key comment by Ray Cox was that rezoning the land has the implicit promise of support (sewer, power, fire). This means that annexing the land as ag is essentially free, but later rezoning is where the true accounting for strain on infrastructure becomes an issue. Northfield is a bad place for Light Industrial? Well, there were comments that Northfield does not have: a good source of blue collar workers. They cannot afford to live here. a good IT infrastructure (for example)That is more easily fixed if an industry with deep pockets wants to come here, e.g., data storage facilities. a high tech workforce. The education system in Northfield seems to not value the tech worker directly, so we do not grow them locally. This, coupled with (believe it or not) the lack of a good nightlife which makes it hard to entice them to move here, means that we have difficulty drawing in those workers. Loss of ag land. Little thought was given to this, I guess we can always eat Brazilian soy beans. But realistically, without a good target for the proportions … commercial:industrial:housing:farming how can we tell if we even need the land?

Our conclusions:

• the current planning commission may be the best we have had in years.
• the current process needs clarity and transparency
• the annexation should proceed (8 to 1 in a role-playing poll, not a straw poll)

References:

• Thoughts on annexation to the northwest (LocallyGrown discussion)
• There’s gonna be a new sheriff in town (BruceWMorlan Thinks Out Loud post)
• Yet another call for regionalism (BruceWMorlan Thinks Out Loud post)
• Limits to Growth (Updated from the 1970’s work)
• Smart Growth (Growing a sustainable town)

References:

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: Sunday, 4 May 2008, 6-7:30PM

Well, the Rules state that “All of Politics is Local”, so this week we are going to read all about it (see refs) and talk local. The mayor’s race plus three members of the council make a ruling majority, or do we need the “clean sweep”? Raise your pints, raise your points, raise your minds, but we don’t raise our voices, at Politics and a Pint at the Contented Cow this (and every) Sunday.

Well, we met, and found much to wonder about. We were visited by one Councilperson, Jon Denison, who added his $0.02 to the general discussion. We focused on getting a handle on what the issues were than any candidate should be familiar with. Interestingly, there was a long laundry list of topics (see below), but three that stood out were:

1. What are the City’s decision processes? Do processes even exist or is it a hodge-podge of ad hockeries?
2. Economic Development and growth (annexation issues).
3. Local sustainability (food and energy)

We will explore this more next week.

The white board at the end of the day.

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 6-7:30PM, 27 Apr 2008

References:

• A PBS workup of National Politics - a palate cleanser if you get tired of the bad taste that local tribulations leave. Read about the national stuff and you might want to hug your councilperson.
• LocallyGrown has at least two threads …

Who should run for mayor and city council?

David Hvistendahl, mad as hell, announces run for mayor

• And there are the issues!

“Who shot the PD Chief” …Podcast: Mark Taylor, Northfield’s new Police Chief

Follow the money … Created Crises or Creative Crises? (The “Missing Millions”)

Our image abroad … (well, locally at least), What’s the matter with Kansas Northfield? Too many of us are snobs.

At the last P&aP I talked briefly with John Fossum, recently returned from Afghanistan. He said he had some photos (on a computer) and that he would be interested in showing us some of them and talking about his experiences “over there”. This should be a very interesting evening, in the spirit of an earlier mind-opening presention by Carleton Professor Bereket Haileab , who gave a presentation in December of 2007 (with visuals!) on the topic “The Ethics of Foreign Aid”. Join us for what promises to be an interesting peek behind the headlines at the next Politics and a Pint!

John Fossum provided us with a fascinating look at a side of the Iraq situation that we almost never hear about. His perspective as a teacher and guide to a country going through the agony of moving into modernity without getting there because the people demand it was very enlightening.

One story that stuck in my mind was when he was explaining what he was doing there. As a lawyer he was helping build (by teaching and advising) a legal structure that would take the country out of a tribal model into a model of justice more like what we take for granted. The old ways are so far removed from what we consider civilized, and his story that a tribe or village that owed restitution to its neighbor would often send one or two of their daughters to the offended tribe by way of “settling the books” was a story that made me sit back and rethink.

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 6-7:30PM, 20 Apr 2008

References:

• Wikipedia on Afghanistan
• Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
• Afghanistan Online (History)

We are still gripped by the chill of winter, but that is nothing compared to the icy feeling in the pit of your stomach if you are trying to do your own income taxes. Obama says the people are bitter and clinging to the guns and their gods. Well, I doubt that the annual IRS ceremonial sacrifice, where we all do a St Vitus dance of forms and free-style, helps much. We will be tax minus two days when we talk about TAXES at the next Politics and a Pint.

According to Wikipedia this disease is cured every 20-200 years by a revolution.

Well, maybe not (it IS April, after all). But even so, the “hook” that grabbed people in the first American Revolution was taxation. Now that same hook is grabbing us again. This week at StOlaf students were treated to presentations on two alternatives to the current oppressive system. I’ll review the current tax structure (30,000 pages in 300 seconds, set your timers!). Then we’ll look at these novel alternatives against the attributes that we have identified as being desirable characteristics of a taxation system.

References:

• Who pays now? (The American). My own (old) study of income taxes. And, of course, Wikipedia.
• FairTax (a national sales tax)
• FlatTax (just what it says)
• Comparing the fair and the flat tax.

So, let’s get ready for the Tax Revolution by reading up on and discussing at great length, TAXES! Next, at Politics and a Pint.

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 6-7:30PM, 13 April 2008

Okay, so oil is over $100 a barrel, diesel is $4 a gallon and the Chinese are buying BMWs like there was a tomorrow. Is the sky falling or is it all just marketing hype? In the interest of unearthing some truth, we will visit the topic of “peak oil”. What is it? How do we predict it? How do we avoid it?

Economists tell us that we never “run out” of a resource, it just gets too expensive to be used the way we might have gotten used to. Consider whale oil, which used to be a pretty valuable and increasingly hard to find resource. When’s the last time you felt the pinch of not being able to find good cheap whale oil? This is an example of “substitutability”, which says that expensive goods will be replaced by alternatives. Indeed, while good intentions will put a few hybrids on the road and make some people choose lower life styles closer to work, $10 per gallon gas will really incentivise (!sorry!) the masses. Let oil prices rise!

On the other hand,

Pillars of Economic Growth Theory. Technological progress, along with substitutability, is the other foundation pillar of continuous growth theory. It is assumed that with enough money, research will always provide a technical solution to either increase efficiency, or to substitute for some valuable resource which becomes scarce through overuse.

Ref: Defunct Economic Theories

Well, aren’t we going in special directions now? So bring your one-handed economists, your dreamy-eyed optimists and your darkest pessimists as we wallow in the deep pools of “Peak oil” … at the next 6 Apr 2008 Politics and a Pint!

Some light supplemental reading:

• Basing his calculations on the peak of oil well discovery in 1948, Hubbert used his model in 1956 to accurately predict that oil production in the contiguous United States would peak around 1970. [emphasis added]
• Peak oil? Read all about it.
• Roll your own? This company says they can grow their own biodiesel using algae.
• Substitutability - the economists’ answer.

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 6-7:30PM, 6 April 2008

Last week’s P&P was canceled, but a couple of us showed up and we started in on the death penalty. We’ll reprise that (briefly), then open up for a general discussion and a straw poll on the national election. Some of us will pick candidates because we like what they are promising to give us (free health care, safety nets for bad investors, and “what about the children?”). Others of us will pick candidates because they promise to follow principles we find important (”let them eat cake (that they buy themselves)“).

It promises to be a contentious and foundational night … don’t miss the next Politics and a Pint.

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 6-7:30PM, 30 Mar 2008

Well, before we talked politicians we talked (again) about the death penalty.  At the end of the night we had a pretty good solution, but we left the numbers as an exercise for the interested student.

I argued that the numbers only allowed me intellectual honesty in that I could pick a position knowing that I condemned some (unknown) innocents to death (whether because I (through the state) executed them or because I (again through the state) let them live and possibly kill again.

Some people were unable to separate their emotions from their thoughts while others simply did not care to connect the dots, but there was little direct support for the death penalty.

One interesting comment made later was that perhaps life in prison was worse than death (if we take away the TVs, the exercise rooms and the human contact). Perhaps such prisoner’s could be offered a “little yellow pill” once a month that they could take to end their meaningless and unredeemable existence. Seems harsh, but at least such a death would not be done “in our name”.

We confront one of the more divisive of issues … capital punishment. This is a highly emotional issue and it will take some real open minds to give this a fair hearing. I’ll plan on starting by framing the question as a purely unemotional decision problem — a classic decision problem — how many innocent people die under each of our decisions, and is there a qualitative difference between 10 innocent people dying because we were unable to stop criminals and 1 innocent person that we might (as a society) execute?

Once we see the possibilities we’ll consider other reference points, always keeping in mind the implicit costs of our choice of:

• “thou shalt not kill”
• “an eye for an eye”
• “I don’t want to be a member of a society that kills criminals”
• “I don’t want to be a member of a society that does not protect its innocents.”
• With endless appeals it is too expensive to execute criminals.
• With the trend toward prisoner’s rights, it is unfair …

as the foundation for our positions.

Bring your arguments, but be prepared to listen others as we decide who is “dying for justice” … next, on Politics and a Pint.

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 6-7:30PM, 23 Mar 2008

Some of you with longer memories than the usual scandal-watching P. Hilton and B. Spears fans might remember something about heroin in Northfield? (Say it ain’t so, Joe, say it ain’t so). The city attempted to divert attention from this by throwing the mayor, the police chief, the city council and the city staff under the bus. But we weren’t distracted by all these bit’s o’ drama. Now, as the city considers bringing in a “popular” program (DARE) to deal with the drug problem, we will review how the program works, what it claims and (most important) what it delivers. We’ll ask “who pays for this” and if the answer is “other people” (e.g., the Feds) we’ll ask if we are getting their money’s worth. We’ll snoop out some resources to back our positions and we’ll bring it all together at next week’s Politics and a Pint at the Contented Cow.

References: (some starters)

• http://northfield.org/node/3369 (an early “somethin’s happin’ here” post)
• http://locallygrownnorthfield.org/archives/3095/ (another blogosphere’s dialog)
• D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)
• A skeptical site (Alcohol Abuse Prevention)
• Another more academic skeptical paper (Health Promotion International)
• An article in the NHS Periscope

Read, think and be prepared to be enlightened! Hope to see you at the Contented Cow this Sunday!

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 6-7:30PM, 16 Mar 2008

We talked a couple of weeks ago about “unintended consequences”, which is a term that captures the idea that the road to heck is paved with good intentions. We will continue that investigation by asking what we mean by “fair trade”, what we hope to accomplish (our good intentions) and the reality (unintended consequences). I’ll post some references later tonight.

Well, I was slow with those references, here’s the link to the report Steve is holding in the photo, “Unfair Trade“.

Annie was all set to make her points, with a birthday to celebrate she still had time to come and put in her $2.00 worth (adjusted for inflation).

BONUS ROUND! A couple of us are going to meet early (5:30PM) to talk about “The Golden Compass”. What is the meta-physical model behind this challenging young adult series? Where does it fit in the pantheon we populate with spiritual life?
Ref: the film and the book (Northern Lights)

Hope to see you at the Contented Cow this Sunday!

Legal details (in appropriately tiny font):

What: Politics and a Pint
Where: The Contented Cow
When: 5:30PM, then 6-8PM, 9 Mar 2008