Philadelphia's New Soda Tax: Everything That's Wrong With Modern "Liberalism"

For the last two decades, we've been seeing one of the most dramatic resortings of political coalitions that the republic has ever experienced.  It couldn't have been more clear in the World War II era until the dawn of the Clinton era.....young professionals voted Republican and steelworkers and coal miners voted Democrat.  The flipping of these coalitions has been playing out at a healthy clip over the last quarter century but is really accelerating in the Trump era, with many of the arguments that used to be made by Republicans now being made by Democrats and vice versa.   We've seen it play out a great deal this weekend in response to a majority of British voters who cast a ballot in favor of leaving the European Union.  Conservatives at home and abroad are cheering on the kind of populist peasant uprising based on the principles that used to be attributed to liberals....while liberals are looking down their noses at the disproportionately working-class demographics who chose to rebel against the "too big to fail" elites who have wired the global economic spider web in a way that is working for fewer and fewer people.  It would be harder to know who the good guys are right now if one side wasn't being led by a puerile, demagogic huckster of the highest order like Donald Trump, but moving forward beyond 2016 I really see self-identified "liberalism" continuing to move away from people like myself who are interested in public policy that lifts up the working class rather than sees their life choices and priorities as a pox on society that has to be civilized and neutered by the "enlightened".

But there's been one sphere of public policy where liberals have made great strides in recent years, and that's recognizing the ruinous effects of growing income inequality.  There have been a number of proposals put out there to help ameliorate this growing chasm--most prominently higher minimum wages that force profitable companies to spread their own wealth to their workers rather than pass on the costs to taxpayers vis a vis public assistance--but the same subset of policymakers are also staining these efforts with regressive proposals that are as contradictory to the goal of reducing income inequality as they are monstrously cynical.  And the best encapsulation of this trend so far this year occurred in the city of Philadelphia earlier this month, where the city council voted 13-4 to separate disproportionately low-income residents from the City of Brotherly Love from $91 million a year of their money.

That's right....the same policymakers who have made income inequality the centerpiece of their policy platform have decided that the poorest residents of one of America's largest city who have limited access to supermarkets with healthy food alternatives should pay $1.02 more for a two-liter of root beer and $2.16 more for a 12-pack of ginger ale.  The proceeds from this scheme were originally intended to pay for education in general and more specifically universal pre-K, creating a perverse incentive curve where adequate funding for worthy education goals is dependent on robust sales of the very sugary beverages we're told are such a scourge on society.  But lo and behold, at the last minute before the vote, the cynical assholes of the Philadelphia City Council decided they could raid this new pinata full of blood money for general fund purposes if they so desire as well.  Charming.

There are so many things wrong with this brand of policymaking it's hard to know where to begin, but my most fundamental takeaway is the degree to which society's elites deem their own constituents' lifestyle choices are censure-worthy, something to be preyed upon for their own ends.  It wasn't so long ago that the political left was aghast at the "religious right" for attempting to commingle public policy with social engineering to cleanse the unwashed masses of their sins, but when it comes down to it, the consensus opinion of the left is little different, albeit on a different subset of issues, weaponizing public policy in the most regressive possible way to keep the misbehaving proletariat on a short leash.  Yet for all for their embarrassment at the lifestyles of these peasants, they are desperately hoping the embarrassing lifestyles continue so their universal pre-K is fully funded.

Tobacco users  have been on the receiving end of this treatment for generations, and particularly in the last 10 years or so.  My home state of Minnesota was arguably even more cynical than the city of Philadelphia, with its pseudo-"liberal" legislature and Governor of 2013 bankrolling a new welfare stadium for billionaire Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf through a massive cigarette tax paid for by the low-income workers, abuse victims, and mentally ill that make up the primary demographics of modern tobacco users.  It was only a matter of time until tobacco taxes yielded diminishing returns and cynical policymakers moved onto new "naughty" pastimes of the working-class to prey upon for path-of-least-resistance revenue streams, and the Philadelphia City Council marks the official transition to the public's dietary habits as a way for the state to impose financial punishment.

It's obviously hard to draw a straight line from the peasant uprising in Britain on Thursday and the City of Philadelphia's soda tax, but it's hard not to miss the tone-deafness of elitist policymakers facing their comeuppance at the hands of the people who they are not only failing to deliver a higher standard of living for, but are wagging a righteous finger at for being the cause of the problems.  Neither a soda tax or a cigarette tax--or whatever their next incarnation may be (fast food tax, cookie tax, ice cream tax, Mr. Freeze tax)--will individually elicit the kind of peasant uprising seen in Britain, but the success of Donald Trump in tapping into the frustrations of the downscale is indicative that there's a collective boiling point that at some point in the not too distant future will be reached.  If the left wants to get there more quickly, nickel-and-diming micromanagement on every minutia of the lifestyles of an already agitated voting public seems like a fantastic way of doing it.  Whether it be a peasant rebellion of the existing economic order in Britain or resistance to poor people paying double what they used to for a two-liter of Pepsi, the political left would be well advised to figure out that blaming downscale voters for everything that's wrong in society is not a wise course. 

A Quarter Century of Sioux Falls Trips: What's Changed And What Hasn't

Over this past weekend, I took my annual pilgrimage to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a rite of passage dating back to the very early 1990s when my dad covered much of this territory doing vinyl repair work at car lots throughout southern Minnesota.  I had a distressing revelation a few miles into South Dakota on I-90 when I discovered Lanti's Fireworks had closed.  I had been visiting Lanti's every summer since 1991 to pick up some fairly low-rent bottle rockets and other fireworks at discount prices to smuggle across state lines and set off in Minnesota at my folks' place over 4th of July weekend.  There's a fireworks store across the street that I don't like nearly as much yet was still open, so I had to my hold my nose and go over there to buy $28 worth of junk to shoot off.  But my heart still aches for the loss of Lanti's, a mainstay on my Sioux Falls pilgrimage for a quarter century.

Generally speaking I'm not someone who deals with change well, and I really circle the wagons when it comes to institutions I have a personal connection to, and anything related to those early 90s visits to southwest Minnesota and Sioux Falls are hallowed ground.  I want everything to be locked in place to preserve my memories from the early 90s, in defiance of the constantly changing world and the fact that most of these towns are losing population and can't sustain the same businesses they were able to 25 years ago.  With that in mind, I thought I'd evaluate each county seat and its neighboring rural areas over the course of my 25 years of journeys there and identify what has and has not changed during that time, heading westward on I-90 to Sioux Falls and then coming back on Highway 60.

Blue Earth

Changes have been plentiful and mostly for the worse.  The community was going strong through the 90s, adding a McDonald's and Subway to the already decent selection of eating places for a town of its size just south of the interstate, but things started falling apart in the early 2000s when my beloved Hardee's closed down, the one whose sign could be seen hovering high above the freeway from nearly two miles away when heading westward.  Just as bad, within the last few years, a series of God-forsaken roundabouts have replaced stoplights on Highway 169, turning the nice relaxing drive into town into a stressful navigation of roundabouts.  Another heartbreaking development over the last few years has been the demolition of a charming old barn that used to hover just off the freeway about five miles east of town.  The barn site has been completely plowed over now with no indication that it ever existed.

Thankfully, Blue Earth still has its share of charms despite its declining population and city fathers' efforts to derail it with the roundabouts.  The 55-foot Jolly Green Giant statue still towers over the community and the Dairy Queen next to it.  The Faribault County Courthouse still shines a bright red a few blocks north of downtown.  And even as Pizza Huts have been closing throughout the region, the Pizza Hut just off of I-90 in Blue Earth is still in business, and I let out a silent cheer every year when I drive by and it stays open.


Fairmont
I've always been impressed by how strong the business selection has been in this small city of 10,000, and while there's been a fair amount of turnover they still have a pretty good thing going.  Most prominently missing is the closing of Gunther Foods, the local grocery store run by the community's long-time state House representative.  Also gone is Reco Motors, an old Lincoln-Mercury dealership on the west side of town that my dad got a lot of business at during his time doing vinyl repair work, and the dealership's very friendly old manager who is almost assuredly either deceased on in elder care by this point.  The KFC next to that dealership has also closed, but the old-fashioned front-counter order only Dairy Queen on the other side of it remains.  Just off the freeway, I recall having my choice between Perkins and Happy Chef for the occasional breakfast back in 1990, but Happy Chef closed at some point around 2000, originally replaced by a Wendy's and recently reopening as a Hardee's.  Fairmont went without a Hardee's for several years during Hardee's leanest years when the old Hardee's on the southeast side of town became an Arby's.  The Perkins off the freeway is still there.

More remarkable than what's different is what's the same. Aside from the aforementioned Reco Motors, it's car dealership selection has remained the same.  The town still even has a mini-mall with an operational JCPenney's for crying out loud, along with an impressive selection of retail that only recently lost its K-mart.  Beyond that, most of the restaurants, fast food places, and other businesses in town have remained around and largely in the same location as they were 25 years ago.  Their small frozen foods business Fairmont Foods did close last year, and that's relevant because they were at one time producing a vegetarian product line from Linda McCartney, and actually had an oddball visit from Linda and Paul McCartney who held a press conference in the small, crummy conference room of this frozen foods plant in 1993.


Jackson
My dad never got much vinyl repair business at either of the two car lots in Jackson so I don't have a lot of memories of the town compared to others on this list.  Only one of the two car lots have survived the past quarter century though, and beyond that the impressive Hardee's just north of I-90 back in 1990 morphed into a Burger King around 2000 and has remained such, losing some of its cache for me as I'm a Hardee's man.  The rest stop overlooking the Des Moines River valley remains but the cluster of highway signs in the valley itself have mostly come down.  Beyond that, not much to report that has changed or hasn't changed in Jackson other than there seems to be road construction every damn time I try to drive into town.


Worthington
Few towns in the entire state have changed as much as Worthington has since 1990.  Back then it was in the early stages of a huge demographic shift as cheap labor was imported en masse to fully staff their Swift pork packing plant as well as the now-defunct Campbell's soup plant.  The town would have still been about 90% white back in 1990 but in the 2 1/2 decades since has transformed into one of only three towns in Minnesota with more than 5,000 people that is majority-minority.  The business landscape has thus changed considerably as well with a healthy spattering of new stores serving the Latino, Asian, and East African populations.  Until the last couple of years the town had a mall that was fading quickly and went completely when their JCPenney closed down.  As of yesterday the entire mall had been bulldozed and a new business of some sort seemed to be going up in the considerable lot.  Worthington has also been blighted by a couple of those absurd and confusing roundabouts in the last few years too.

With all of those changes, there are a few mainstays including the town's weird layout, one of the few Hardee's that never closed that I recall stopping for ice cream at back in 1990 on a blistering hot day, and two of the three car lots where my dad got vinyl repair work remain open.  The list of changes in Worthington nonetheless vastly exceeds the list of things that have stayed the same.


Luverne
I was most fascinated back in the day with the fast food selection in these towns and Luverne had a good selection for the size of the town a quarter century ago.  Nowadays, things aren't going so well.  Hardee's...gone.  Country Kitchen....gone.  Pizza Hut....gone.  Dairy Queen....gone.  A McDonald's and Subway have come to town but beyond that all that remains is the franchise that seemed the most unlikely to be in small-town Luverne in the first place...Taco John's.  Beyond that, there's a new Pamida south of the freeway and a veterans home on the north side of town.  Luverne looks and feels the same outside of that.


Sioux Falls
The hardest change to deal with from Sioux Falls was the closing of Lanti's Fireworks this year as cited above, but beyond that, it's been generally good news for the city, which has grown by nearly two-thirds in the 25 years since I first visited there.  Back in the day, there was almost no development off of I-90 but at some point in the mid-90s an interstate exit emerged with a flurry of businesses that from the freeway looks like it goes on quite a distance.  But it was only when I got off the freeway to explore that I discovered this was a stand-alone development that is at least two miles from the northeastern fringe of the city itself.  A freeway shortcut linking I-29 to I-90 (229) has been added in the last 15 years, wrapping around the east side of the city.

Most of the city's development has been along I-29 running north and south, and I explore a pretty good chunk of the city every year.  The freeway itself keeps adding lanes and the busiest exits such as the 12th Street exit off of 29 that I usually take has been altered to accommodate higher traffic volume in the last 10 years.  Obviously businesses have come and gone along my typical route through town since 1991 but there are mainstays that always help me identify my location.  Best of all, the Arby's on 41st Street across the street from the Empire Mall, both of which I first visited in 1991, are still exactly the same, and the continuity there is even more important to me than Lanti's Fireworks.


Windom
Getting off the freeway at Worthington and heading northeast on Highway 60, the collection of "elevator towns" that run along the tracks have seen substantial change, most prominently due to Highway 60 upgrading from two lanes to four and diluting some of the rural charm the stretch of highway had.  Hurt the most was Heron Lake, the largest of this string of small towns which the old two-lane went right through but the current four-lane lurches west to avoid.  The gas station that used to be front and center in town on the old 60 has long ago closed.  The gigantic grain elevators on this stretch have remained though, and if anything have only increased in capacity.

The town of Windom itself looks remarkably close to what it did 25 years ago.  Even though it added a McDonald's, its original Hardee's co-existed along with it even as so many other Hardee's closed.  Godfather's Pizza has thrived there for years along with an old Dairy Queen near downtown.  Even the small Happy Chef that used to occupy a site on 60 held on until the last three years or so.  Windom also has the purest "town square" of any county seat in Minnesota, entirely unchanged in a quarter century.  Its car lot seen has changed some, and the Ford dealer with a block of new trucks encircling his store has scaled back considerably.


St. James
I have a much more comprehensive history with this town since I started my professional career here and lived in the town for three years (2002-2005) but going there every year since I left town 11 years ago I can safely say that the things that meant most to me about the town disappeared before I moved there since I moved away.  There was a Ford and a GM dealership in St. James in the summer of 1990...in fact the very first two dealerships where my dad got vinyl repair business.  And there was a Hardee's on the west edge of downtown where we went to eat after finishing up our work and returned again a few times.  As the years went on, both dealerships managed to get snuffed out on weird technicalities, and the Hardee's closed in the months before I moved to town in 2001.

There's still plenty to like about St. James, including its scenic lake setting and still-vibrant business sector (as long as you're not in the market for a car!) which expanded to Highway 60 once 60 expanded to four lanes.  There aren't too many towns of 4,500 that still have two small-town grocery stores but St. James does.  The community also seems to have had better luck than most in assimilated a very large Hispanic population which was in its relative infancy back in 1990.


Even in the tiny towns along I-90 or on state highways coming back from St. James, there are still things I pick up on driving by....things that either changed considerably since 1991 or haven't really changed much at all.  And this particular route only constituted one stretch of what my dad did for his vinyl repair route, as towns such as Mankato, New Ulm, and St. Peter, among several others, constituted towns I navigated thoroughly that summer and still revisit annually, albeit on a different road trip.  Not sure if it's more therapeutic to see the things that have stayed the same or more depressing to see the things that have changed but since I keep going back I must get far more positive than negative vibes revisiting these communities.  Hopefully that will continue as I keep visiting even as things I held dear about that era continue to change.

A Quarter Century Since the 15-Game Streak

I had a chip on my shoulder about the Minnesota Twins in the spring of 1991, a chip I had been carrying since the summer of 1989 when they traded away Frank Viola, former star pitcher and 1987 World Series MVP.   The team did poorly in 1989 and even worse in 1990.  In April 1991, I happened upon a magazine display where the Sports Illustrated baseball preview was lurking and I gave it a gander.  Sports Illustrated predicted the team standings for season's end, and predicted to be in dead last in the old American League West was the Minnesota Twins, denigrated for their unimpressive roster of rookies and has-beens.  Those Homer Hankies, said the Sports Illustrated, were about to become crying towels.

Suffice it to say things didn't work out that way for the 1991 Minnesota Twins, although the first couple of months of the season sure made it look like it would.  What happened?  The streak happened!  Starting on June 1, the still below .500 Twins began winning...and winning...and winning.  I was checked out of the Twins, but my dad was home for the summer and listening to a lot of WCCO AM radio, passing along reports about the streaking Twins.  As the streak kept going into a second week, I finally had to set aside my hard feelings and get in on the excitement, starting to listen to the games on the radio with the wins continuing to pile up to a full 15 games.  The streak appeared to continue to a 16th game but the Baltimore Orioles came from behind to win in the ninth inning and end the longest winning streak in Minnesota Twins history.  But the good mojo kept rolling from there, into October when the Twins went from worst to first in their division and went on to win what most consider the greatest World Series of all-time, with four of the seven games decided on the final play.

This Cinderella story was cobbled together with the assortment of rookies and has-beens belittled in Sports Illustrated all coming together for above-average years.  Veteran pitcher Jack Morris signed on for his (sadly) only season in Minnesota in 1991 following a couple years of decline in Detroit.....but rebounded to win 18 games in 1991 with the Twins.  Rookie pitcher Scott Erickson won 12 games in a row in May and June, going on to be a 20-game winner.  Rookie second baseman Chuck Knoblauch put up batting and fielding numbers impressive enough to be chosen as rookie of the year by season's end.  Veteran designated hitter Chili Davis, considered past his prime, went on to have one of his better seasons, hitting 29 homeruns.   Journeyman third baseman Mike Pagliarulo, signed on when well into his 30s, also had one of the better years of his career.  Kirby Puckett has another great year hitting well over .300.  Even veteran pinch hitter Randy Bush hit over .300, indicative of a team that was delivering in the clutch.  There were no Babe Ruths or Walter Johnsons on this team, but there was an entire roster of players who were collectively doing what was needed to win most of their games.  I believe left fielder Dan Gladden's batting average slipped below .250 in the last weekend of the season, but beyond that the 1991 Twins' entire roster was batting above .250.

Another key ingredient to the Twins success came from.....the players they received in the 1989 Frank Viola trade, which included 16-game winning starting pitcher Kevin Tapani and closer Rick Aguilera.  As for Viola, he never completely collapsed but his career was past peak and finished with a 13-15 record in 1991, meaning the Twins general manager made the right call to go for the trade.

The Minnesota Twins team of 25 years later is having the reverse scenario this summer, falling disastrously short of expectations with a record that puts them on track to be the worse team in franchise history, and one of the worst teams in the history of the game.  Even if the Twins had a 15-game winning streak tomorrow, they'd still be nearly 10 games below .500!  And it's not even the All-Star break!  This makes me appreciate the 1991 team that much more, as it was good for me personally to get the Twins back on my good graces that year.  Best yet, I was at about the perfect age to really appreciate a world champion baseball team that pulled off one of the most unexpected rallies ever seen in baseball.  And it all started this very week 25 years ago.