Chris Coleman is the mayor of St. Paul. And yes he's a liberal and yes the council is a bunch of worthless community organizers, and yes, I don't bother reading the local paper because, well, papers are pointless to read. However a friend of mine brought in the Pioneer Depressed and I saw this;
Now here are my quick drunken points, which would still outdo any leftist in that they're based in reality, no matter how doused with scotch they may be;
1. "Responsible" private investment means that Coleman wants to attach so many strings to that "private" money that it is not really private. You see "private" means it's up to that private individual to do what s/he wants with it. But when you attach strings by making it "responsible" (and by responsible, we don't mean "responsible" in the classical English sense, we mean in what Chris Coleman cares to define responsible which I'm going to crazily guess here and means it achieves a leftist or politically advantageous purpose) you essentially make that private money "quasi-private" as you more or less start to dictate what can be done with it. So it really won't be private money, but besides which, you won't really ever get any money into the city anyway because when you put the adjective "responsible" in your quote, well you've just driven off any real investor with half a brain and real money.
2. "Adds value to our neighborhoods." Again, the money is not enough. Oh, I know, one would think "well wouldn't the money going in to the neighborhood immediately benefit it? You know, like driving home values up and so forth?" Ah, but that is the key string. You see, if any of you dumbass investors with money want the "honor" and "privilege" to invest in the sh!thole...err...I'm sorry, "cosmopolitan metro area" that is known as St. Paul, it must also benefit the voters of Chris Coleman to keep him employed...errr....I mean...."to benefit the neighborhood." But of course, again, any investor with half a brain cell still functioning will not invest in St. Paul, and thus, all Chris Coleman has really managed to do is scare away ANY hope of bringing ANY REAL help in bringing investors into St. Paul.
Ergo, if you think about it, Chris Coleman is just like Hugo Chavez. Chavez, if you haven't noticed is playing the same game with the oil companies, timber companies and other industries in Venezuela. Oh, his piece of crap third world country would love foreign investors to come in an invest, but when they do, he has this nasty habit of nationalizing their subsidiaries, if not attaching so many strings that most companies will never ever set foot inside Venezuela again.
And this gets to a very important lesson for all leftists to learn, assuming you have not been driven off by my cynical tone already.
If you want to bring investors into your little realm, then you must not tax them, not apply regulations, not apply all these little "wish lists" or bark all these orders. You must realize you are the beggar asking for money. And if you are so inconceivably stupid (which I know a lot of you are) to start demanding worthless and utterly pointless things like "green construction" or "committing a percent of pretax profits to non-profits/community programs" or, heck, just an insane level of property taxes, guess what, your "private investors" are going to be as real as one of your other pet projects;
Social security.
Of course, don't listen to me. I just plain don't know what I'm talking about.
I like how the follow-up in the article talks about "irresponsible capital". What exactly is irresponsible capital, do you suppose? All I can picture is a drunken 20 dollar bill mooning the neighbors. I thought the whole idea behind capital was that if you were irresponsible with it, you would lose it or someone would take it away from you (over in MT this is commonly seen with "video poker machines" wherein irresponsible people with capital believe that if they put their capital in a magic box and push some buttons, the pretty box will give them more capital because the people who own the boxes say they do it all the time).
ReplyDeleteResponsible capital/irresponsible capital? I mean, what is the capital responsible about? The environment, the poor, the economy? I suppose the perfect answer would be all that and a bag of chips. So really, the city counsel is hoping someone will open a Walmart that only sells items made out of recycled bamboo and gives away free refrigerator boxes and shopping carts on Tuesdays.