Posted 11:13 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

MN Senate passes Eminent Domain Reform bill

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Posted 9:58 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Lessons from life

I happen to drive a 16-year-old car. It only has 72,000 miles on it, but it wasn't an expensive car when new. Last weekend, the engine started missing a bit and stalled a couple of times at stop signs. By the next day, the problem had gotten so bad that I really couldn't drive it. It started fine, ran fine in Park, Neutral, or Reverse, but killed every time I tried to go forward. I phoned a nearby garage and had them tow it in for work. Later, when I talked to the service manager, I got a strange and suspicious story... that the car had been stuck in 3rd gear, but that the mechanic had gotten it out of 3rd, now it was stuck OUT of third, but running fine. Bottom line... transmission failure... big bucks.

If my car had been worth several thousand dollars, I might have just told them to go ahead and replace the transmission. As luck would have it, the car just isn't worth putting that amount of money into, so I paid the garage $140, including $50 for towing, and went home. It took less than a block to discover that it wasn't going to shift into high gear, and also that it was NOT running fine. After numerous stalls, I got it home and parked it, figuring that I would have to buy another car.

However, I happen to know a semi-retired, very experienced mechanic. With nothing to lose, I phoned him and explained it all to him. For $30, he'll make a "house call" to do a little investigation, so, on Monday morning, he arrived at my car in the parking lot. Within a few minutes, he took the top off some sort of air-distribution thingy, and we saw that the tube was clogged with leaves. He took those out and we tried taking the car for a drive again. It ran like a top!, also demonstrating that it indeed would not shift into high gear, limiting speed to about 30 MPH.

Parked again at home, and back under the hood, Dave was just looking around (purposefully, as I later learned) and discovered a rod hanging alongside the engine, that rather obviously belonged on a pin nearby. He put it back in place, and concluded that it should have some sort of plastic retainer to keep it in place, but it seemed to stay on rather well as it was. After explaining that this thingamabob controlled shifting, we went for another drive. It shifted just fine, into and out of all 3 gears!

In about 15 minutes, with only a screwdriver, Dave had fixed what was originally wrong, plus what had been made wrong at the other garage, and he did it in my parking lot, in drizzling rain, for $30. I gave him $40 instead. I was relieved, and also perturbed, now wondering if the garage, with a prominent name, had demonstrated incompetence or deliberately misled me in hopes of getting a big repair job.

I thought about just writing off the whole event as a lesson learned at a cost of $140 and some grief. However, I'm a trusting fellow, and I've always had good experiences when I complained to a business, so I decided to email the owner of the garage with enough of the story to make him curious if he was honest. A couple of hours later, the garage owner called and we chatted some. He decided to come over and check out the car in person. I showed him what Dave had found, and it didn't seem to surprise him at all. He wanted to drive the car back to the garage and show the service manager, which we did.

The people I dealt with at the garage were young guys, with good technical training but not much experience, and they had clearly jumped to some faulty conclusions. There was some gentle ass-chewing, and the young service manager learned a lesson. The garage owner looked up the part number of the missing plastic retainer, which they will order and install on my car, then he returned all my money, including the towing charge and a bit more, and drove me back home.

Lessons? There were several good ones learned today.

Posted 11:15 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Eminent Domain update

On Tuesday, I participated in a rally at the Capitol with Minnesotans for Eminent Domain Reform. I first got interested in eminent domain after it was already too late to help try to prevent the Best Buy takeover in Richfield. One problem with being a libertarian is that there are so many issues to be concerned with... so many instances of government demolishing personal rights, that impossible to be aware of and keep informed about many of them. After discovering, in Richfield, a mother of four fighting almost alone to keep her home from being taken, I decided that I would hone in on the issue of eminent domain and place it above all other issues.

I joined a group formed (too late) in Richfield, only to find that it was dominated by a couple of men in it for personal aggrandizement. I think I could have taken control of the group, but it would have been an ongoing battle to keep the group on track. It's a shame, because Richfield has continued to use eminent domain pressure to rework other parts of the city.

I formed PATROL online, in a limited attempt to at least give people a local focal point with which to find each other and to give notice to others of an impending attack on property. I tried very hard to interest other libertarians in the issue, with little success.

The biggest problem with eminent domain abuse is that everyone believes it only happens to someone else, and that you just "can't fight city hall". Those are both major fallacies.

For several years, when I would raise the subject of eminent domain, I would get blank looks, and have to educate. Meanwhile, the Institute for Justice, known for fighting eminent domain abuse, opened a local office, and I had an ally with both interest and teeth.

Then the Kelo decision by the Supreme Court... a LOSS for property owners (defended by IJ)... suddenly made everyone sit up and notice that the Supremes were ENDORSING the abuse, and public outrage occurred.

Recently, Minnesotans for Eminent Domain Reform was created... a coalition of many groups now concerned with the issue, and action is finally taking place. The rally on Tuesday was in support of bills in the Minnesota legislature, HF 2846 (Jeff Johnson, lead author) and SF 2750 (Tom Bakk, lead author). I'm told, by someone who should know, that these bills are good protection for property owners, and that they have a good chance of passing, hopefully without being watered down. The MN EDR coalition has some teeth too, with a large number of member groups that represent many voters and with lobbying capability.

I'm delighted to be able to "let go" of the issue, confident that others are carrying that ball effectively. I won't ignore it, but it's nice to be able to refer those who write me to an organization with more clout. I have gotten enough support from other Libertarians to enable us to attend several city council meetings, add to the number of protesters, give some support to embattled property owners, and give a little advice.

It's ironic that it took a terrible Supreme Court decision... a LOSS for citizens... to wake up the nation to the extensive abuse. I'm sure I'll write more on that subject at No Force, No Fraud.

Posted 10:55 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Oh yeah... the next day was better

In my last blog, I complained about my day-designed-to-test-your-patience, and hoped that it would get better. It did... nothing spectacular, but way better. I try to remind myself that without an occasional crappy day, normal days wouldn't seem "normal".

Couple of days after that, I had a "date" for a drink that turned out to be delightfully strange. As we entered our chosen restaurant/bar, she was recognized by two couples just being seated... old friends she hadn't seen for years. When one of them reminded her with his name, I recognized it as a common name where I lived in Iowa, and he knew my tiny home town. After joining them for a drink, the two of us moved to a separate table and began talking.

After some 4 hours of great conversation, she asked my daughters' names. I said them, and she repeated them questioningly, with astonishment, adding my ex-wife's name. Turns out that she was a good friend of my ex during the time around our divorce, and member of a women's card club that sometimes met at our house.

No doubt that we had met before (my daughter recognized her name), but we had chatted many times while volunteering without recognizing either faces or names. I'm not sure which of us was more flabbergasted.

Posted 1:06 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Am I being punished?

No, I don't think anyone else has control of my life, but there is occasionally a day that tests credulity. Today was such a day. I suppose more could have gone wrong, but virtually everything I attempted today was a complete flop. I purchased more glass for a picture frame, to replace the one I had broken... and broke the new one too. I bought a new mouse for my PC, because the old one was making some unexpected odd moves... only to find that the new one did some of the same, meaning that the problem resides within my PC. For example, sometimes the pointer will just jump to the corner of the screen.

My cat, having no better day than me, was, now and then, hurling from both ends. I played computer pool, and lost. I played solitaire, and lost. I played rummy, and lost. I played cribbage, and lost. I went online to play poker, and lost. I went to a different poker site, and lost. I tried solitaire again, and lost.

Late tonight, I decided that a day such as this would be a good test for a daily horoscope. If there was any validity to a horoscope, it should have given me some kind of warning, such as "Attempt nothing today" or "Just stay in bed today". I checked a couple of online horoscopes. Absolutely nothing that could be interpreted as "bad day approaching. So much for astrology, or the fortune cookie I had after lunch.

I suppose a lot more could have gone wrong... if I had attempted more, but I learn quickly and restricted my movements and activities to only those that had non-fatal possibilities. I accomplished nothing, but I did manage to survive.

The bright side? Tomorrow almost has to be better.

Posted 10:33 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Old enough to remember Skid Row?

Into the 1950's, Minneapolis had a clear-cut Skid Row, until the city simply demolished 40% of the downtown area, displacing hundreds of small businesses and thousands of residents. When I moved here in 1965, the destruction was almost complete. I can remember dining in the Waikiki Room of the Nicollet Hotel, and at the Sheraton, which was built right after the destruction, but didn't last long. I visited the new IBM building, built isolated and alone in the midst of the vast flattened area. It didn't stay long either. There were still a few of the skid row residents on East Hennepin, on the other side of the bridge. Local history, for the most part, does not mourn most of the demolition, except for several buildings that would now, if they still existed, be prized examples of heritage architecture.

The river side of downtown has, ever since, been an area to drive through... nothing more, but that same area was, for a very long time, the most active and lively part of Minneapolis. It grew from the river and the mills along the river. The first city hall was smack dab in the middle of what later became skid row... in a triangular building where Nicollet and Hennepin avenues met. It was called the Gateway area, and the city had intended for it to be the first, and grand, part of the city seen by visitors arriving by boat or railway.

The demolished area was home to thousands of poor working people and all of the businesses that catered to them, but it was also home to many unemployed men... some drunks, many simply old, who lived in spartan rooms above stores and in a few old hotels. It was the poor part of town, avoided by many others who weren't sorry to see it vanish.

I want to recommend a book to you, titled "Down & Out - The Life and Death of Minneapolis's Skid Row". It contains a well-researched essay by Joseph Hart and photographs by Edwin C. Hirschoff. It will amaze you if you don't know what was lost through urban renewal. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book presents how Skid Row came to exist in the first place. Why were there so many near-homeless people there, and why was that area so run-down? The answer is not so simple.

Briefly, the area became a convenient home to poorly-paid workers employed by the mills and other river businesses, and to migrant and seasonal workers in lumbering, mining, fishing, and construction work. "Skid Row" is, in fact, a logging term. Those were all industries essential to the development of Minneapolis as a large and prosperous city, and none of that would have happened without those workers.

Over time, those industries became of decreasing importance, and the Great Depression virtually stranded a large number of those people where they were, with little hope of ever improving their lives. By the 50's, many of those remaining were too old to work and too poor to move. The city promised to build low-cost housing to replace what was being destroyed, but they completely renigged on that promise. Where all those men went is still largely a mystery.

If you're interested in Minneapolis history, the book "Down & Out" covers a chapter that must not be forgotten, for it well illustrates the cruelty of urban planning and unintended (or were they?) consequences of overblown government, and disregard for people.

Posted 8:09 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

We lost a fine gentleman
Harry Browne 1933-2006

Harry Browne died Mar. 1st.
Please see my commentary at No Force, No Fraud