A story that was headlines in the '90s has returned.Kevin Duchschere of the Strib says: “Macy's is closing its St. Paul store this spring, leaving downtown without a major retailer and bringing to a close 50 years of continuous department store operations at the Wabasha Street location. Store employees were to be told this week that the store will shut down in late March, according to sources who did not want to be named. On the one hand, the store closing comes as no real surprise. The St. Paul store typically has been a sluggish retail performer, catering mostly to downtown's office workers and residents. But city leaders long have feared that downtown would become a retail ghost town without a large store anchoring its retail strip along Wabasha.” A “retail strip”? Is that what they’re calling it?
For the PiPress, Tom Webb, Frederick Melo and Nancy Ngo add: “A Macy's spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday. But shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday, employees were summoned to a storewide meeting. Employees at the Starbucks located inside the department store were also called to the staff meeting. They then returned around 4:30 p.m., telling customers they were told by management to close the coffee shop early.… Joe Campbell, Mayor Chris Coleman's spokesman, noted, ‘Downtown's momentum has been building and the city sees great things ahead for this site.'" Really? Maybe they think they can turn it into a stadium?
With the farm bill pretty much lost amid the carnival of fiascos that was the 112th Congress, Steve Karnowski of the AP reports: “Minnesota U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson said Wednesday he's so upset that Congress passed only a short extension of the 2008 Farm Bill that he won't work on a new version without assurances from congressional leaders it will get a vote. The full House never took a floor vote on a five-year farm bill that passed out of the House Agriculture Committee in July with bipartisan support from Peterson, the ranking Democrat on the panel, and its chairman, Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla. The plan was projected to reduce spending on Agriculture Department programs by $35 billion over 10 years. But Speaker John Boehner said it didn't have enough votes to pass because some Republicans wanted to see deeper cuts to food stamps.”
Gay marriage will get a moment in the spotlight, according to Sen. Scott Dibble. The AP says:“The Minnesota state senator who will take the lead in that chamber on a bill to legalize gay marriage says backers will wait at least a month or two into the upcoming legislative session before they start to push it hard. Sen. Scott Dibble of Minneapolis says Wednesday that Democrats taking power at the Capitol next week plan to focus early in the session on what he called ‘kitchen-table issues’ of improving the economy and creating jobs. But he says gay marriage backers in the Legislature want a vote in 2013.”
Obviously the St. Paul City Council has very little regard for personal safety or our precious constitutional freedoms.A PiPress blog item says: “The city of St. Paul doesn’t have direct say over statewide gun laws, but that isn’t stopping city council members from calling for more gun control. At the Wednesday, Jan. 2 council meeting, they amended their annual request to lawmakers to include a crackdown on semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazines. They join a chorus of municipal bodies, politicians and Hollywood celebrities clamoring for tighter gun laws.”
Speaking of Hollywood mixing with Minnesota …Marino Eccher of the PiPress writes: “A Burnsville woman who discovered a sex tape of her boyfriend with someone else was so angry she posted the video online, prosecutors say. But the act of revenge may have backfired in catastrophic fashion. The girl in the tape, along with two other people depicted in sex acts, was a minor. Now, the woman accused of posting the video faces child pornography charges in Dakota County District Court. Kayla Jo Henry-Heagle, 21, was charged by summons Thursday, Dec. 27 with possessing and disseminating a pornographic work involving minors, both felonies. … Henry-Heagle found the video on the cell phone of a man she had dated. The man left the phone with her after he was incarcerated for unrelated reasons.” So OK, maybe an episode of “Cops,” not actual Hollywood.
A thousand planes landing safely may not be news. But … . Candace Renalls of the Duluth News Tribune says: “Duluth International Airport's new terminal is on schedule for its targeted Jan. 14 opening, with a public celebration set for two days earlier. Construction crews should wrap up four years of work on Friday, save for some finishing touches. That gives the green light for occupancy, though the move already has been made by some staff and tenants. They include the Duluth Airport Authority, which was the first to move in in mid-December. … Although selling naming rights for the new terminal had been explored, that won't happen. ‘We ultimately decided that was not going anywhere,’ Werner said. So the new terminal will be called the Duluth International Airport terminal, the same as the old terminal, which is set to close at 1:30 a.m. Jan. 14. The new terminal will open 90 minutes later, at 3 a.m.” Apparently they didn’t bite on The Last Place on Earth International Terminal.
Speaking of … the AP is saying: “A judge has ruled that a downtown [Duluth] head shop is creating a public nuisance. Judge Shaun Floerke ordered the owner of the Last Place on Earth to pay for two police officers to provide security and nuisance control. The judge said head-shop owner Jim Carlson's argument that there is no proof his business has sold synthetic marijuana in the past year is irrelevant. Business owners have long complained about the throngs of customers who gather outside the shop.”
The Strib picks up Charles Lane’s Washington Postcommentary on higher-ed “bloat,” with our own U of M as Exhibit “A.”“At the University of Minnesota, the number of employees with ‘human resources’ or ‘personnel’ in their job titles has grown from 180 to 272 since the 2004-05 academic year. Since 2006, the university has spent $10 million on consultants for a vast new housing development that is decades from completion. It employs 139 people for marketing, promotions and communications. Some 81 administrators make $200,000 per year or more. In the past decade, Minnesota's administrative payroll has gone up three times as fast as the teaching payroll, and twice as fast as student enrollment. Oh, and tuition more than doubled in that same period, to more than $13,000 per year. … Solving the problem, however, won't be easy. Americans and their elected leaders have grown used to discussing college ‘affordability’ as a matter of distributing ever more government aid — in the form of tax breaks, direct assistance or subsidized loans. Actually, this is self-defeating: By making it possible for students to pay higher tuition, federal and state aid reduces institutions' incentive to make the hard budgetary choices that might hold tuition down in the first place. … The higher-ed establishment has no cause for complacency in an era when YouTube routinely teaches young people everything from dance moves to Spanish, for free.” Indeed. See above, under “Burnsville woman.”