FACE OF EVIL

504. Welcome to Blog 59. Today we will pick it up where we left on the last Blog.

There was one line that caught my eye that I want to expand on it.

THE LONG LETTER

505. The Mayor said the following:

“due to the mismanagement of this tavern”

Once again the Mayor is trying to paint us in a bad light. He is trying to make you think that we are incompetent buffoons that don’t have a clue what we are doing. And quite frankly that is something he knows a lot about himself. In the almost 50 years of owning businesses, I can’t remember anybody accusing me of “mismanaging” any of them until now. And this is coming from a guy who had never met me and has never talked to me. He really is not in a position to make a statement like that. But he did because he wants to believe so bad that it’s true and he wants you to believe it too.

So,the best way to deal with this accusation is to deal with the facts and the truth. I did a Blog about my background. It’s Blog 37 and here is the link: blog 37 (palacebartruth.com)

Here are some excerpts from that Blog.

506.

1980-Started Ottawa's first video store (Captain Video)

ONLY ACTUAL PICTURE I COULD FIND 

COMMENTS

We started that Captain Video when I was 24 years old with $50,000 and did over one million in sales in our first year. In today’s dollars that would be about a $150,000 investment and over three million in sales. I don’t think we would have achieved these results if we had “Mismanaged” this company. Have you ever achieved anything like this Mayor Paine? No you

haven’t.

ELGIN SPORTS

In Ottawa, Elgin Sports was viewed like VIP, Northwest Outlet, Keyport, Globe News and many others are in Superior. Businesses that are looked at as the backbones of the community that have endured the test of time and all them respected by the citizens. Elgin Sports lasted 70 years. A good run by any measurement.

Have you ever achieved anything like this Mayor Paine? No you haven’t. You have never even signed the front of a check. But I bet you just love signing the back of those checks provided to you by the taxpayers of Superior.

506.

SHORTY’S AND THE PALACE

In Blog 37 I spoke of both of them. Here is the link.

blog 37 (palacebartruth.com)

Today I want to add some new information and perspectives on them. As many of you know, unfortunately the block on Tower ave. where Shorty’s and the Palace were located had turned out to be a very blighted area. Many people would avoid especially when it got dark outside. That was a shame. But when I went into to Shorty’s for the first time it looked like somebody dropped a bomb on it. Nothing was salvageable,but the layout was perfect and within about 10 minutes I knew what it was going to look like and when it was finished that was the image I had on day one. 

So I bought it and we opened in 2013 with about 40 new jobs. Tower Ave. was still under construction but that didn’t seem to matter. We were packed 7 days a week for the first couple of months and then things settled down which is normal when a new business opens. We were profitable from the time we opened until we closed it in 2021. We brought in thousands of customers every month and that area back to life. In the next few years a lot of the businesses around us started renovating their stores and new ones were opening in the area. And that’s what success does. It makes people want to be part of that success.

The Palace story is different. It was an existing business that did not require near the amount of TLC that Shorty‘s needed. Between the two I invested around $1,500,000.00. But it was money well spent. In our first year, 2017, we tripled the profit of the previous year. Every year after that, our profits increased substantially. And in 2021, despite all the behind scenes scheming with “Bad Decisions Paine” and his cronies going on, that we had absolutely not known about we increased profits by 33 times.That would be like buying a stock in 2017 for $1,000.00 and 4 years later it was worth $33,000.00. So how could I achieve all this success if we were badly “managed”? How could this happen if we were an unsafe place? The answer is we couldn't have. And think of all the thousands of new people that we brought down to our area with the Palace. We took an area that was going downhill fast and was a black eye to the city and turned it into a destination. And then new businesses were opening and existing ones were renovating. That’s what success does.

I think Mayor Paine had a bad dream and woke up and wrote this letter in a way that he wanted you and city council to think that we were the devil’s den and Satan was our resident DJ. We actually didn’t have a DJ. It might make a good book or movie but an awful autobiography. I probably should have analyzed the things he said that were true in his letter. It would have been less than a paragraph. But if I did that,look at all the fun you would be missing. My estimated time that I’ll be finished analyzing this letter is October 2027, but I’ll try and speed it up.

507. The Mayor sent me that letter on April 12,2022, yes,the letter he sent in triplicate, email, regular mail and registered mail. And you wonder why I call him a “”Madman”? In that letter he quotes the following:

“SUPERIOR TAKES PRIDE IN A VIBRANT NIGHTLIFE” 

Vibrant Nightlife? What? I have never used the word “Vibrant” when thinking about Superior’s nightlife. Another man-child choice of words. Maybe he was on that Vegas trip that you the taxpayers paid for because I have been living here for almost two years now and it’s very “Vibrant”. There is more things to do here on a given Friday night that there is to do in Superior in an entire year. Now I know it’s not fair to compare Vegas to Superior but I also don’t think his statement is fair either. I think using the words “Pride” and “Vibrant” are “Stupid” and Childish”. Having said that I think for a city of it’s size Superior has a pretty decent nightlife. I would say that having Duluth next door to us has played a huge role to that as well. And because of that, for a city of it’s size I would rate Superior’s nightlife above average. And I would say that Shorty’s and the Palace contributed greatly to that by reviving a blighted area into one of the prime nightlife areas. 

And then another uninformed, man-child choice of words. He does this all the time like when he said on BLOG 9 in an email to Tylor Elm only 8 hours after the ONLY shooting on March 18, 2022:

“She is correct, there was a rather extreme shooting last night. I don’t believe there was any loss of life but injury appears likely”

The “SHE” he is referring to is the Mistress of Misinformation herself, Melissa Hyatt.

Of course it wasn't extreme and there was no injury. And he had that information available to him at that time. The police reports were at city hall and did not support what he said in this email. So the question is did he know that? Why didn't he know? If he didn’t know why would he put this an email without knowing? After all it only happened 8 hours before he wrote this email. Why the rush to judgment? Did he try and ask the Chief or Captain for the information before he wrote the letter? And If he did have the information but he knew that it wasn’t serious enough to revoke a license so he wrote the “Jim Paine”, “Man-Child” version to make sure he would have a better case to close us down and get the press, the city council and the public all riled and get them on his side. 

Either way this is unbecoming of a leader. It’s not what you want from a leader. Funny enough in his letter of Dec 6, 2022 he is still referring to the “two shootings”. The second shooting which I called the NON-SHOOTING-SHOOTING and did an entire Blog on it. It didn’t even occur on our property and he had known that for months before he wrote this letter. How do you explain that? It’s just lie after lie after lie. And why on earth is his main source of information the perpetual lying machine, Melissa Hyatt. She is the last person any one should go to for anything unless they were writing a book about lying. Why even have police reports when you could go right to Melissa Hyatt for all the most accurate news and reports. After all she did call herself a person of integrity. When the best thing you can say about these two is they are good liars, it’s a sad and troubling situation. 

When you spend so much of your time tearing down good people, when the facts don’t support what they are saying my only thought is it is strange and bizarre. I believe it’s irresponsible and criminal. When you have businesses where there have been murders and far worse things that ever happened at the Palace and never got shut down how do you justify any of this? You can’t. And then when he dropped his “Manifesto of Madness” less than 3 hours before the city council meeting to decide the fate of Jordan’s license what were they thinking? They had to have been surprised. They must have been thinking that even for this out of control Mayor, he had sunken to new sort of insanity.

My takeaway was that it sounded like he was having a mental breakdown. At the very least they should have recognized something was very wrong here and maybe, just maybe they should delay the vote to delay the meeting to another time until further investigation of the letter was performed before they vote on somebodies future. And they had that chance when two councilmen proposed just that. But no, they shot that down when the Mayor disagreed with that. And then they went ahead and voted her license down 8-2.

508.

MAYOR PAINE—GOOD OR BAD MANAGER?

Have you ever read or listened to any of the Mayor’s State of the Stupid AKA State of of the City reports. If so, did you fully recover? He does them once a year. They are just about a lot of nothing about nothing. Typical political nonsense that many politicians across the country spout all the time. They really are just a reminder of why we don’t like politicians. And Paine’s are no different. Same old tired liberal talking points.

Butterflies are free, we will all be running through fields of flowers in slow motion, unicorns and jackalopes everywhere, and Taylor Swift’s Eras tour will never end until she turns 65 and will play a free concerts at Earth Rider’s Brewery Grounds every year courtesy of Jim Payne. And she’ bringing Travis Kelce with her. He makes Superior sound like the new Dubai. He mentions all the new businesses that came to town but doesn't mention all the ones that went out of business and also the ones that are just hanging on. No, in Jim Paine’s world everything is tickety-boo.

But once again facts get in the way. Under Mayor Paine’s reign of terror Superior’s 

population has dropped. He never mention that in his reports does he? Below you can see the facts and charts and I’ll have comments after that.

SUPERIOR POPULATION BY YEAR

SUPERIOR POPULATION BY YEAR

SIMILARLY SIZED CITIES IN WISCONSIN

SIMILARLY SIZED CITIES IN US

SUMMARY

What is the current population of Superior?

Based on the latest 2024 data from the US census, the current population of Superior is 26,423. Superior, Wisconsin is the 1,486th largest city in the US.

What was the peak population of Superior?

The peak population of Superior was in 2000, when its population was 27,398. In 2000, Superior was the 1,168th largest city in the US; now its fallen to the 1,486th largest city in the US. Superior is currently 3.6% smaller than it was in 2000.

How quickly is Superior shrinking?

Superior has shrunk 3.5% since the year 2000. Superior, Wisconsin's growth is extremely below average. 85% of similarly sized cities are growing faster since 2000.

AND THEN THERE IS THIS

509.

COMMENTS

So is Mayor Paine a good manager? Based on these numbers the answer is absolutely not. And look at how bad Superior rates versus other cities. The population has dropped every year since he has been Mayor, but don’t tell him. He doesn't take well to criticism. You may never be heard from again.

He is a business destroyer and a city destroyer. It’s hard for me to believe that any business person in this city has any confidence in him and any business big or small thinking of locating here would feel the same way. You are as a mayor what Tampon Tim Walz is as a governor. Incompetent, disgraceful, useless and dangerous.

So here is the bad news. 

Butterflies are not going to be free. He wants to tax them.

We will not be running through fields of flowers in slow motion, at least not in May. The grass will be too long. 

Unicorns and jackalopes are not real. Sorry.

And Taylor Swift’s Eras tour will not play any free concerts at Earth Rider’s Brewery Grounds every year courtesy of Jim Payne. And Travis Kelce won’t be here either. Sorry again. 

510. Well that’s it for today. Thanks as always for tuning in and I’ll see you soon!

Brian

And finally, from the “I can’t help myself file” I leave you with this: