Highway 14 funds

THUMBS UP: An important piece of the funding puzzle for the Nicollet to New Ulm Highway 14 project fell into place on Thursday. The U.S Department of Transportation approved the $22 million BUILD grant for the State of Minnesota to use for the Highway 14 expansion project.

It only took 40 or 50 years of complaining and lobbying, of surveys at the Minnesota State Fair listing Highway 14 as one of the worst and most dangerous in the state, of terrible accidents and people dying, for the state and federal government to come around with the money. We are grateful they did, and thank the politicians on hand to announce it on Friday. But we give the credit to the Highway 14 Partnership for its unshakeable resolve to push and push and push for this project. The partnership includes all of the communities along Highway 14, and they are hanging in until the project is completed. We thank them all.

Family Video

THUMBS DOWN: Family Video in New Ulm announced this week it is going out of business. It is liquidating its stock of DVDs, Blu-Rays and video games.

We have to give the business credit for hanging in as long as it did, when Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and other streaming services have sent DVD rentals the way of the buggy whip.

They succeeded by focusing on family fare, and service. We are sorry to see them go.

Deplorables?

THUMBS DOWN: Hillary Clinton made a lot of people unhappy in the 2016 election campaign when she described Trump supporters like this: “Half of them are a basket of deplorables… the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic–you name it.” It was an unfair generalization that helped mobilize the Trump base.

However, there may be a few deplorables in the Trump camp. You can tell them by the signs we’ve seen in one or two spots in town. They say “Trump 2020 – F—Your Feelings.” Only there are no dashes. The F-bomb is fully spelled out.

There’s really no place for that kind of slogan in public, especially in neighborhoods where kids could be walking by. We hope whoever thinks that sign is funny and appropriate will think again and take it down. Otherwise, they can just hop in the basket.