Canadians will resolve Duluth Heights traffic problem

By RON BROCHU

The solution could be worse than the problem for Duluth Heights residents plagued by discourteous East Enders who race down residential streets en route to Miller Hill stores.

City councilors next week will debate whether to further restrict local traffic to cope with boorish sots who can’t see fit to drive Arlington Avenue between Arrowhead Road and Central Entrance. Councilors will consider a plan that would close Ideal Street and forbid east-bound traffic on a portion of Maple Grove Road as the next logical step to discourage “cut-through” driving. That’s in addition to existing Eklund Avenue barriers designed to prevent locals from being smacked down by drivers who view the neighborhood as their private shortcut.

In a letter to Heights residents, city engineers offer one alternative – remove the temporary Eklund Avenue barriers. That, of course, would be akin to waving a green flag at outside motorists.

The Maple Grove Road restrictions are hardly fair to those who live and pay taxes in the neighborhood. In essence, Heights homeowners would be penalized because outsiders refuse to drive along established thoroughfares.

Additionally, it would force neighborhood motorists to further congest Central Entrance, where rush hour traffic has become intolerable. Each day, more drivers are using East Palm Street to circumvent the 4:30 p.m. bottleneck between Central High School and Arlington Avenue.

The proposals will be reviewed by city councilors at the 6 p.m. committee of the whole meeting on Monday (Jan. 12).

It’s possible the discussion will be moot. Duluth-Superior will soon become part of a new country having ties with Canada, according to a bizarre scenario being advanced by a Russian academic.

The United States will fall apart next year, strangled by economic and moral decay, believes Igor Panarin, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats.

“There's a 55-45 percent chance right now that disintegration will occur," Panarin, 50, said in the Wall Street Journal’s Dec. 28 edition. More specifically, he claimed the aforementioned decay – aided by uncontrolled immigration and collapse of the U.S. dollar – will spark civil war.

America, predicts the former KGB analyst, will split six ways along geographic lines, with our neck of the woods becoming the Central North American Republic. Presumably, we’d be answering to Ottowa instead of Washington, Prime Minister Stephen Harper rather than President Barack Obama, Ontario Premier Dalton James Patrick McGuinty rather than Govs. Tim Pawlenty and Jim Doyle.

The change might be advantageous for the Twin Ports, where residents already speak Canadian, drink Molson and worship Alanis Morissette. For instance, Minnesotans could nudge Pawlenty off of his Republican bully pulpit, from which he has vociferously chastised Duluth for being too spendy. There’s little appetite for his fiscal conservatism among our neighbors to the north, although Pawlenty may get some street cred for supporting a larger DECC hockey arena. In the new world order, he and other heavy-handed Republicans will be banished to Fargo, which will become a prison city for wealthy ingrates.

Doyle may survive, given his leftward leanings, but he would have to park the cheesehead and embrace the constitutional monarchy form of government. That could prove difficult. His primary skills are fundraising and pleading ignorance when state contracts land in the hands of overstuffed campaign donors. Those abilities aren’t needed given Canada’s brief election cycles and electoral process.

Unlike remaining regions of the former United States, the Great North American Republic would benefit from Canada’s single-payer health insurance. Small businesses could again afford to insure their employees, and governmental agencies – including cities, counties and school districts – wouldn’t have to constantly wrangle with unions over upwardly spiraling healthcare costs.

A substantially uglier scenario would emerge for America’s existing health system, which is controlled by profiteers and legislative lobbyists, designed primarily to benefit stockholders rather than patients. As the party fizzles, healthcare execs would have to adapt to a life without backdated options, forcing them to drive Lincolns instead of Acuras.

At the street level, Duluthians may actually be able to trade their SUVs for standard cars. Unlike the existing United States, Canada actually invests in its roads, replacing broken pavement with smooth new concrete. Its potholes aren’t large enough to swallow Toyotas, unlike the moonscape left in Duluth by mayors Fedo, Doty and Bergson.

Taxes, unfortunately, would be higher. But society would not collapse, as existing American politicians have led us to believe, nor would freedom disappear, as is evident in Canada and Scandinavian countries that lean toward socialism.

Is Panarin for real or just another publicity hound? It’s anyone’s guess, eh?

Author Ron Brochu archives his stories at www.ronbrochublog.com. He invites your comments.
Published in the Jan. 9, 2009 Northland Reader.