Thanks for that
Developers are Crabgrass blogger Eric Zaetsch, who coincidentally has been dropping tidbits of knowledge all over this blog today, has been keeping up with the Ramsey Town Center story for some time. His most recent post noted the coverage by the PiPress and ECM on the consent order handed down on Community National Bank and is worth a read. I note it here due to this paragraph:
The ECM article, by Patrick Tepoorten with assistance from Tammy Sakry, is the more comprehensive report. David Orrick, who did the summer series on the Ramsey Town Center, wrote for Pioneer Press.
Sakry deserves a lot of credit for her depth of knowledge on the larger issue of the Ramsey Town Center debacle. She had been providing me regular updates and background on the story for months and in fact was the one who alerted me to the fact that the OCC had released the order. Interest in North Branch, for obvious reasons, has been limited to CNB’s role in the story. I also have great admiration for what the PiPRess did with the issue, especially over the summer. It was high quality reporting.
On a personal note, it’s always nice to read that someone thinks you did a quality job on a story, especially one of those critical blogger types, and especially on a story as complex as this. Thanks to Eric for the acknowledgment.
Thanks for defining who the comments are from. Tammy and I once had a shouting match on the phone, and one article she wrote on Ramsey Town Center had me blog it with a little-girl cheerleader pom-pom image. But she does the job day-to-day, and the ECM papers cannot alienate the local governments that buy the legal advertisements.
Given the framework, the ECM - ABC chain does a better job than mass media, Murdoch and Fox.
Patrick is in the conservative camp, and it seems to me a camp in flux, with the Vince Gold book on Goldwater being an indicator.
Things under the rubric of “conservative” that bother me, given a pessimistic view of human nature, are represented by Blackwater - a band of private armed and highly trained warriors run by a man who’s been a staunch Rick Santorum supporter and by sibling marriage is into the Amway family.
Neither Santorum nor Amway is the brightest facet of conservatism as I understand it.
Between wars, Europe had private armies, and the US Attorneys’ coordinated effort a few years back against the “militia” movement underscores the fact that concern about private armed groups has a broad base.
I think Patrick and I agree on not precipitously leaving Iraq, but differ on finger-pointing and blaming for how we got there. I expect there’s an uneasiness on his part about how it all is being deficit funded. That’s a hell of a gamble, and a self-fulfilling reason to have to stay longer. If you do not steal special oil concessions and enforce the theft how do you pay your debts?
One “conservative” dilemma I see is use of military force as an instrument of foreign policy and not as a defense force. The standard inside-the-military definition of the ultimate objective of applying military force is to destroy the enemy’s will to resist. A government resorting to that rather than efforts at coexistence and diplomatic and economic pressure is a government with the mindset of “enemy” and that “will to resist” is wrongful and to be destroyed. There’s a devil in carrying that over from foreign to domestic policy, and simplistic thinkers in high places can threaten liberty that way on the home front.
And home front, though not a term in fashion other than among “homeland security” sorts, perhaps not there even, first rests on the notion of a “front” as where “we” meet the “enemy” being the “front,” and there we attempt to destroy a will to resist and worse, a will to differ.
Vince Gold, in praising Goldwater alternately characterized this Bush president as a throwback to Harding and LBJ. Leaving Harding aside, his view of Bush’s use of and rhetoric concerning executive power and privilege as harking back to the pair of imperial presidents, LBJ and Nixon, each from his own party but more alike than different, was to me the most interesting theme of Gold’s book.
Last two thoughts - first, the “conservative” tent and all those claiming a right to be within it - what do you think Bill Buckley thinks of Ann Coulter?
Second, jumping on the Washington Times in an earlier comment as sensationalist journalism, that was excessive, but mass media is suffering from concentration and current views of a “style” that sells advertised products best and garners ratings for TV or circulation for papers.
I do not think conservative or liberal thinkers are comfortable with the “thought processes” of talk radio or Fox. Something has gotten cheapened and dumbed down. Patrick writes news.
I think it would be interesting if he writes on the issue sometime. Optimistic or pessimistic, ideas, etc. By writing locally and blogging, he in a sense is voting for alternatives.
Finally, I like a blogging tool like this one that has spell-check even for comments. I use Blogger and it is weak that way.