Ben Cretsinger

@rudyfunkmeyer Rough showing for a former member of House leadership. He fell off hard during the HCA race in 2022.

@CretsingerBen It was a first ballot victory. Not particularly good for a candidate who wants to stay competitive.

In other news, former Minnesota House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler lost the DFL endorsement in 43B to Jess Lewis.

@Savageboston We are going to crush the Flag Football even in 2028

Tom Brady to Rob Gronkowski 👀

@blitzjb7 @StarTribune It was a rural GOP representative who proposed it.

@StarTribune I haven’t looked into this but the default reaction is to assume any decision made by metro Minnesotans will be the wrong decision.

Expand the House, shrink the Senate? Minnesota lawmakers debate changes to avoid another tie startribune.com/grow-the-house…

@chrisjohnmeyer I like that idea much better.

I feel like a better solution to the tie issue would be to give the Lieutenant Governor a tie-breaking vote

@s0phistry @MaxHailperin I mean that is how it has been. The DFL basically got 0 bills heard during the 67-66 false majority and then only got hearings on their bills when they had the gavels. And the GOP has always been trying to stop every DFL bill likely as payback for the Trifecta.

@CretsingerBen @MaxHailperin I think this is right. It looks like from the schedule the House has devolved into just GOP bills on GOP gavel days and Vice versa. So very limited time to hear bills before deadline. And that’s even if they get a bipartisan vote to move out of that committee with the tie.

Minnesota legislative procedure junkies: Is this a known tactic, filing two identical bills so that the referrals to two committees can proceed in parallel rather than in sequence?

@MaxHailperin @s0phistry I think this is because the DFL especially is having a hard time getting the GOP to move their bills they want to make sure they get heard in all the committees they need to be heard in.

@s0phistry Right, I've seen clone bills before as a way of tons of coauthors piling onboard, but this isn't that, having the same two on both copies.

@JSchripsema @AlecStapp Because people who cannot afford the down payment should be able to live in the suburbs if they want.

@AlecStapp Why on earth are you promoting we build single family homes for renters? Wouldn't it save them a LOT of rent money if we built more apartment buildings or duplexes instead?

Messing up “stocks vs flows” is a common mistake people make in policy conversations. Two things that are true at the same time: 1. Institutional investors own <1% of all single-family homes in the US. 2. Institutional investors build ~8% of new single-family homes in the US (and rent them out). So as a share of the total single-family housing stock, Wall Street is a rounding error. But as a share of new builds, Wall Street plays a decent size role (though still a minority). If you care about increasing housing supply & improving access to the suburbs for renters, then banning institutional investors from owning homes would be counterproductive.

@Skordor @donavonindocawl I would be fine paying anything within that range. Right now I pay 6.4 cents per mile. The average MPG vehicle pays about 1.3 cents per mile.

@Skordor @donavonindocawl I would love to pay on a per mile basis. I drive 3,900 miles per year. A similarly sized gas vehicle would get 21 MPGs. That is roughly 186 gallons of gas. That would be $60.54 in gas tax per year. Per mile that is 1.5 cents per mile. Based on eMPG it would be .3 cents per mile.

If you've got a $955 annual registration fee for a car you bought in 2023 in MN, that means you dropped a cool $75,000 on this ride. Presuming you put a down payment of $15K on this and you have excellent credit, that means your car payment is $1,084 a month. Anyway, evergreen.

@gkranzyy @Corndogdreams @donavonindocawl That isn't true the 2023 change was to slow down the rate of the depreciation based on vehicle age.

@Corndogdreams @donavonindocawl At face value, it makes some sense. More expensive car = more expensive tabs. What I disagree with strongly is not using any sort of fair market value calculation. It began in 2023

@donavonindocawl Trust me that fee is several times more than what I would have paid in the gas taxes for an ICE vehicle of equivalent size or for a vehicle of similar efficiency.

@CretsingerBen I think the rational of that was that higher fee is your share of the missed gas tax?

@Skordor @donavonindocawl Sure happy to do so but that EV fee is an over taxation vs the amount of lost gas tax. I would be more than willing to pay a similar amount to what a vehicle my size or with my fuel efficiency would pay.

@CretsingerBen @donavonindocawl How about you help pay for the roads

@SalTheTree @KSTP 1. She can't she is just one legislator. 2. She is a legislator and the Legislature along with the Executive branch set the tab fees.

@KSTP You guys should do your jobs and ask the DFL rep why she thinks she can just quintuple registration fees. This is tyranny.

John Jasinski (R-Faribault) authored a bill this session to revert license tab fees to pre-2023 levels after hearing many complaints from his constituents. kstp.com/kstp-news/top-…

@gkranzyy @donavonindocawl This isn't exactly true the amount of the tabs based on that MSRP has annual depreciation.

@donavonindocawl MN bases tab fees on the *original MSRP of the vehicle when it was brand new* regardless of when it was purchased or for how much. It’s not possible to know how much this guy paid or what his monthly payments are based on this insane policy

@Corndogdreams @donavonindocawl Its a way to make the road taxes more progressive since the gas tax is very regressive.

@donavonindocawl Why would a more expensive car cost more to register? that makes zero sense.

@Metal_Crow @mpopv @TolkienWorldG Its interesting he doesn't say 'any of us' he says 'any of you' because of course the foe is not beyond him it is his equal in theory at least.

@mpopv @TolkienWorldG "This foe is beyond any of us" is just a chilling thing to hear from someone like Gandalf.

One small detail in the books that I love, which the movies missed, is how Boromir and Aragorn react when the Balrog appears in Moria. Their first instinct is to face it. Boromir blows the Horn of Gondor and steps forward, ready to fight. Aragorn immediately joins him, drawing his sword and standing beside him on the bridge. The rest of the Fellowship reacts very differently. Frodo and the other hobbits shrink back in fear. Gimli, bold throughout Moria, is overcome with dread. Legolas is the one who actually recognises it and cries out that it’s a Balrog. Boromir and Aragorn don’t yet fully understand what they’re facing. They just see an enemy approaching and move to meet it.

@aaron_lubeck @TomLeaf @alfred_twu @cayimby Also the geography realities limit how much sprawl is feasible. And honestly most cities are already at that limit how many people are willing to do 3 hour commutes daily for work ...

That’s pretty accurate. I loathe the sprawl, but it’s empirically clear that it is a component of affordable metros. Still, it’s likely that if urban areas were freed (which the NIMBYs are working tirelessly to prevent), then it is also possible to create an affordable city with a hard urban growth boundary. For various reasons, there are few examples of “UGB+affordable city” being done well. Portland is gradually getting there (due to some incredibly ambitious and interesting reforms), but only after doing it poorly for half a century.

There is a difference between OVERCROWDING and #DENSITY. DENSITY is what PREVENTS: #Overcrowding #Displacement #Sprawl graphic by the great @alfred_twu @cayimby

@adamscochran IDK about the worst... COIN operations are hard in the best of circumstances and the US isn't bad at it these conflicts are just very hard to win.

“We’ll just bomb him too” I need you all to understand that Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan taught us a clear lesson. America is the best in the world at traditional warfare. And the worst in the world at dealing with insurgency. We make more enemies than we halt and we loss lives and dollars doing so. You cannot bomb away fundamentalism. That’s why diplomacy and constructive programs like USAID need to exist. So we can avoid forever wars that we end up losing.