All your base are belong to us

Metropolitan Council District 9 candidate Bart Rehbein of Centerville says, "It doesn't make sense to get people living in a certain area and commuting in a certain way when you know they're probably not going to." Huh? Are you want to speak the English?

He's probably trying to say there's no point in doing regional planning because people will just do what they want to anyway. Doh! The fallacy is this: when done properly, regional planning results in zoning, infrastructure like transportation and utilities, tax breaks and much more which provide various incentives and disincentives for living or commuting in certain ways. People are still free to choose, but maybe now they will choose differently because they will be presented with a different set of options, a different group of benefits and costs.

The latter thinking is being demonstrated successfully around the country, even in the worst of the sprawling cities like Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Denver. Typical of our local officials now in office, they continue to leave their heads in the sand, intentionally ignorant or willfully dishonest.

From the Foxes Guarding the Chicken Coop Department

The newly-elected King from the Suburbs Governor Tim Pawlenty nominated attorney Jane Volz to head the Department of Labor and Industry, the department charged with enforcing labor laws in Minnesota. Now it turns out that Ms. Volz didn't bother abiding by the very laws she would enforce as commissioner of this department when it came to her own employees. That was the news a week ago. Despite King Pawlenty's expressed support, it appears the governor's administration has decided to cut their losses and are forcing her to resign.

Volz's law practice specialized in employment law, so if anyone should have been aware they needed unemployment coverage for their employees, she should have. Any remarks about not knowing about it are disengenuous at best and outright lies at the worst. Besides, when was ignorance of the law an excuse?

As Patrick McFarland, executive director, Anoka County Community Action, recently wrote, "It should not surprise anyone that Tim Pawlenty, an attorney who violated Minnesota campaign law to get elected governor, selects as labor commissioner Jane Volz, also an attorney, who violates the very Minnesota labor laws she is charged to enforce."