Phillips/Powderhorn


Questions on rent control

I read Cam Gordon’s take on rent “control” [“Competing options for rent control,” Jan. 2, 2023]. Now I have more questions than I did prior to reading it. The options Cam wrote about are vague; they contain no specific examples of how an option would affect renters and developers/owners. Wouldn’t…

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Trump People ‘R’ Us

BY JOHN RYKHUS JR. Go east on the I-94 freeway and jump off onto Highway 29 near Elk Mound, Wisconsin, toward Green Bay. At Chippewa Falls take a hard left onto Highway 178 and then you will see something. Rolling fields are tree-lined with green forest. After crossing O’Neil Creek…

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Passing: Pat Welna

Pat Welna Pat Welna died on Jan. 17. She was 93. She was the last of the second generation to run Welna Hardware on Bloomington Avenue. She was funny and always cheerful, and she made you feel special even if you acted like an idiot with a plumbing problem. She…

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A response to SSPride Ukraine columns

Your coverage of the Ukraine conflict aligns with a pro-war narrative driven by neo-cons and the military-industrial complex. These actors have dominated U.S. foreign policy for decades, proclaiming U.S. hegemony and laying the groundwork for expansive wars (in non-NATO countries Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria). This huge, revolving-door bureaucracy and…

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There’s no place like home – finding “inspo”

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Inspo is not a tropical fish, like Nemo. Inspo = “inspiration” in millennial slang. Thanks for attending my tiny Ted Talk. In the throes of winter, even in the supposedly hopeful post-solstice part, it’s kind of hard to think about redecorating, remodeling, or (shudder) moving to…

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Trip to Africa is life-changing

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Steve Floyd (not related to George Floyd) has been taking Black youth from South Minneapolis on trips to Africa since the early ’90s. Floyd feels that traveling to Africa is one thing that really works to help them heal from the effects of slavery throughout their history.…

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Lake Street Council rising

BY KAY SCHROVEN The Lake Street Council (LSC), a nonprofit organization, has been around since the late 1960s. It was formed to support businesses that remained on the Lake Street corridor as the escape from the urban landscape to the suburbs continued. This exodus began in the first half of…

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Declining civilizations

BY TONY BOUZA My very unscholarly appreciation of history includes the bromide that great civilizations implode through moral rot rather than outside challenges. As the saying goes, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” I agree. A recent case illustrated the point.…

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Competing options for rent control

BY CAM GORDON The rent control debate is heating up. With the city’s rent stabilization workgroup completing its work in December, it now falls to the City Council to approve a policy and draft an ordinance if we are to have rent stabilization in Minneapolis. On Dec. 13, the 25-member…

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The women who moved a castle

BY WILLIAM BURLESON Much has been written about the former White Castle on the corner of 33rd and Lyndale in South Minneapolis. It is certainly a curiosity. Something about it says it doesn’t belong there, this prefab fast-food restaurant in a largely residential neighborhood on a shady tree-lined street. It…

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So far, so what?

BY ED FELIEN Kyrsten Sinema: Sinema’s great moment of fame came when she emerged as one of the principal architects of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. She suffers under the self-aggrandizing delusion that without her it wouldn’t have passed. It was a budget bill. It only needed 50 votes plus Kamala…

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