In a late night daze, my friend and I hopped over to Hibbing for the Jubilee street dance to wander around. Since he is from here, and I am not, I always end up being an observer. I am always stunned by one thing on the range; almost entire missing age groups. Now at my age, I do not expect thousands of raving near middle age people roaming around as we usually have children, jobs that actually require us to show up and perform and other categories under that evil responsibility word. But one thing is always a shock...the age group between 25 and 45 seems to almost not exist. It seems that beyond 22 or so and after mid baby-boomers, the lack of compatriots is obvious; you feel as if an alien. So, is my perception correct? The best data we have is now 9 years old, but it can tell us something:

From Hibbing, the first is the table;

22 to 24 years	254	2.9	285	3.1	539	2.97
25 to 29 years	438	5.0	426	4.6	864	4.77
30 to 34 years	461	5.2	498	5.3	959	5.29
35 to 39 years	570	6.5	629	6.7	1,199	6.61
40 to 44 years	708	8.1	722	7.7	1,430	7.89
45 to 49 years	823	9.4	750	8.0	1,573	8.68
50 to 54 years	634	7.2	594	6.4	1,228	6.77
55 to 59 years	436	5.0	476	5.1	912	5.03
60 and 61 years	140	1.6	152	1.6	292	1.61
62 to 64 years	192	2.2	237	2.5	429	2.37
65 and 66 years	115	1.3	168	1.8	283	1.56
67 to 69 years	199	2.3	275	2.9	474	2.61
70 to 74 years	368	4.2	484	5.2	852	4.70

And this table includes projections:

2000 Population*	17,071
1990 Population*	18,046
Percent change from 1990 population*	-5.4
2007 population estimate***	16,170
2010 population projection***	--
2000 Total minority population*	530
Urban population**	12,603
Rural population**	4,467
Median age*	41
Population by Age
Population under 18 years*	3,891
Population 18 years and over*	13,180
Population 65 years and over*	3,372

Now for my old district on the west side of St. Paul:

22 to 24 years	580	5.2	524	4.8	1,104	5.03
25 to 29 years	1,042	9.4	1,006	9.2	2,048	9.32
30 to 34 years	946	8.5	853	7.8	1,799	8.19
35 to 39 years	869	7.9	755	6.9	1,624	7.39
40 to 44 years	833	7.5	645	5.9	1,478	6.73
45 to 49 years	638	5.8	569	5.2	1,207	5.49
50 to 54 years	481	4.3	496	4.5	977	4.45
55 to 59 years	354	3.2	385	3.5	739	3.36
60 and 61 years	116	1.0	156	1.4	272	1.24
62 to 64 years	156	1.4	181	1.7	337	1.53
65 and 66 years	96	0.9	107	1.0	203	0.92
67 to 69 years	132	1.2	146	1.3	278	1.27
70 to 74 years	180	1.6	284	2.6	464	2.11

and the projected numbers, which are unfair due to size:

2000 Population*	287,151
1990 Population*	272,235
Percent change from 1990 population*	5.5
2007 population estimate***	287,669
2010 population projection***	--
2000 Total minority population*	103,253
Urban population**	287,151
Rural population**	0
Median age*	31
Population by Age
Population under 18 years*	77,827
Population 18 years and over*	209,324
Population 65 years and over*	29,647

Remember, most of the numbers are now 9 years old, and simply moving forward the clock you can get new age cohorts; reality is more complex, however, as the economy and movement will alter things quite a bit. The stunning difference is in the old 25 to 44 Year old age classes. which in the simple sense are the new 35 to 54 year olds. Especially in the thirties, the difference is quite striking. The median age is ten years difference, which tells you the weight of the pyramid. Hibbing, and probably most range cities, is skewed much much older. The projections are also different; almost 30% of Ramsey county in 2000 was under 18. Hibbing's was slightly less, but the important thing was how many were already in child bearing years. Alot of Hibbing has since passed beyond true child bearing age. It will be interesting to see what the changes are in next years census.

I guess my perceptions are true...but darnit the pics I grabbed of the dance itself didn't turn out. Alot young people drinking like fish and standing around ...and far less people wanting hair band music, thank goodness.

What kind of state do you want?

With Governor Pawlenty's pronouncements on the Corporate tax rate, I thought it would be interesting to do some comparisons since this plan, like most Republican thinking, makes a number of assumptions without consulting that abstraction called the real world. The source of his numbers is this corporate think tank. For 30 years, tax rates and loopholes for corporations and the wealthy have been expanded to where the they only pay 6% of taxes collected in the U.S. The first question might be to examine where tax rates are by state; Minnesota is at 9.8 % and the rate is high, but it does not tell you what breaks and subsidies there are. It also does not say why it is a much more succesful state then such tax paradises like South Dakota, home of the poorest county in the United States. But let us compare this with states with much lower rates, then look at this to how a society might be contrasted rationally, such as by social measurements like access to health care, education, literacy and poverty rates. There it is a bit more confusing, but we can look at states that compare completely opposite of Minnesota by social measurements; For example Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi or Kentucky. These are states with many conditions like the third world, yet have some of the lowest corporate tax rates. In short the world is much more complex than the governor lets on; handing breaks or having low corporate rates is not connected to advancement. In fact, it might show a connection between low rates and low quailty of life. The governor's beliefs, like most of republican thinking, does not work with the real world. After years of budget cutting on the backs of working people, we now have this tired old bucket of drivel. You would think they would come up with something new. In short, it appears the governors model is from down south, with hordes of poor people and a small elite, with no worker's rights and conditions like the third world for much of the population.

Do Unicorns steal the tusks of Narwhal's and other new age theories...

I think it is easily discovered...All unicorns must die !

Range Radio and crazy talk:
Of course all media is in a shuffling state and has been for years, but the talk radio on the range is entering a bizarro world. The am station in Virginia, owned by the local right wing lunatic from Duluth, is best listened to when accompanied by films from the Nuremberg rallies and goose-stepping practice, while that out of Hibbing gives the standard right wing fare...a day to day rehashing of an imaginary world, liberal conspirators preparing children to live off welfare. Knowing a little about the place, I still have not quite figured out just how many whack jobs in the area listen to this drivel. Are they mostly rural? Are they just a skimming of the local elite? Closet cross dressing gun nuts who happen to listen to crazed, obese, multiple divorcees? There is nothing local about it, and there is only one true local station, unfortunately set a little west of here. But as I occasionally listen, I see how the obvious failures of multiple station ownership, lack of local media and lunatic politics come together...Don't bother listening. Just pull some old speeches of Mussolini and at least learn some Italian.

Hopefully non-wonkish;

Minnesota State of the State: This is it?

Listening to the speech was the as if revisiting a bad republican policy document from the Reagan era...no taxes..blah blah blah...the family budget..blah blah...It shows just how ideologically right wing and blind this man is.

His homey family simile might be a great form of communication, but like most of his ideas, it is not based in reality and it does not work. Tucking children in when working two crappy jobs without health care, or working the family budget when it consists of avoiding medical bills, the landlord or foreclosure, or watching your job go up in smoke due to speculation built from the governor's same ideology.

But the government is not a family; it is just a little more complex than that. (By the way, if one continued his way of thinking, his children would be viewed as lazy, irresponsible wastrels leeching off the family income and not earning their own way, rather than, as let's say, children.)

And here is our problem. For three decades now, both at the federal and now state level, there has been a movement, by the wealthy, corporations and right wing true believers to undo the reforms of the New Deal that actually made this a somewhat fair society. More of the tax burden has been placed on working people while the wealthy, investors ( most of whom invest in speculation and not productive capital), corporations have received breaks, loopholes or subsidies in volumes. Supposed centrists like Jesse Ventura, with little understanding of how any of this worked, merely saw it as an equation involving their pocket books, not on where and whom the money was coming from. And now, in this last decade, especially since the Ventura "reforms", we are in yet another mess, and this governor wants to shove the consequences down the road out of pure, blind self and own class serving insanity. By proposing this bag of highly refined manure, he shows what little he knows: In short, he is dealing with a "slump in private spending by reducing public spending". There are alternatives, and here is one proposal, but more could be added.

And decreasing corporate income tax will not solve our budget or make us a a better place to live. The lowest tend to be in states with the worst social statistics, some rivaling third world conditions in the southern U.S.

But that shows where this governor wants to bring us, perhaps. His vision is not of a happy middle class family, but of a small, white elite employing everyone else without benefit of protection or incomes. And that should scare us.