Ruling on Minneapolis charter amendment could affect cities across Minnesota

And how would the Vikings stadium have fared under this? Erin Golden of the Strib reports, “If the state’s highest court upholds a lower-court ruling that the charter amendment proposal must appear on the November ballot, it would mean that Minneapolis voters will be able to decide whether the city should increase its minimum wage to $15 per hour … . But it could also do something more far-reaching: open the doors to more campaigns looking to change municipal government by popular vote.” And if we could all vote on our phones on every idea or bill think how much we’d save on legislator salaries and per-diem. 

MinnPost contributor Pat Borzi files a piece for The New York Times on how Major League Soccer came to Minnesota. “[Dr. Bill] McGuire saw room for significant growth of Minnesota soccer among millennials and the soccer-loving Hmong and Somali immigrant communities. He renamed the club Minnesota United F.C. in 2013, with a local branding firm incorporating Minnesota’s state bird, the loon, into its logo. [N.A.S.L. commissioner at the time, David] Downs also had no quarrel with McGuire’s past. A pulmonologist, McGuire resigned as UnitedHealth’s chief executive in 2006 while the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated him because he was suspected of backdating stock options.” The basics of the backstory are always valid. 

Speaking of back stories, Kyle Potter of the AP has this on the Second District race. “Jason Lewis is making the work of opposition researchers irrelevant for one of the nation’s most contested congressional races. … Democratic organizations have reserved millions of dollars in airtime, waiting to rebroadcast his most controversial comments in what are slim hopes of retaking the House majority this fall. Among them is a 2012 episode of Lewis’ show in which he criticized a ‘vast majority of young single women who couldn’t explain to you what GDP means,’ calling them ignorant for placing greater importance on abortion rights, contraceptive access and gay marriage. Lewis defended his remarks, saying he was only calling women ignorant of GOP values while expressing his belief that the government should protect corporations and religious beliefs when it comes to health care.” 

What happened here? KSTP-TV says, “A fatal vehicle crash on Interstate 35W near 95th Avenue in Blaine Saturday shut down traffic for several hours. The crash happened about 3 p.m. Both northbound and southbound lanes were closed after the crash … But this wasn’t the only accident in the area. Nate Kruckeberg from Anoka said he witnessed another crash on the same road less than a mile away as traffic slowed for the initial crash.” 

No Hillary Clinton, but her campaign boss was at the Fair. For WCCO-TV Esme Murphy writes, “While Donald Trump does have an active campaign in Minnesota, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been more aggressive. On Sunday, her national campaign manager, Robby Mook, was at the Minnesota State Fair. Most pollsters have Minnesota leaning Democratic, considering the state has not voted for a Republican for president since 1972, when Richard Nixon was re-elected. But Clinton was beaten badly here by Bernie Sanders in the caucuses, and the Clinton campaign insists Clinton is not taking Minnesota for granted. ‘We feel great about how we are doing here, we feel great about the organization, and I have been seeing lots of enthusiastic volunteers’, Mook said.” I believe that’s called “boilerplate.” 

The new Viking is not cool with his former teammate refusing to stand for the national anthem. Says Ben Goessling for ESPN, “While a former teammate who caught passes from Colin Kaepernick defended the San Francisco 49ers quarterback’s decision not to stand for the national anthem, a former teammate who blocked for Kaepernick didn’t see it that way. Minnesota Vikings guard Alex Boone, who played five seasons with Kaepernick in San Francisco before leaving in free agency last spring, called it ‘shameful’ that Kaepernick did not stand for the national anthem on Aug. 26 against the Green Bay Packers, adding ‘we probably would have had a problem on the sideline’ had the quarterback done it while Boone had still been his teammate.” 

You gotta put on a show. For the PiPress, Bob Shaw says, “River Valley Church branched out to a second location in 2008. It added other sites in 2010. And more in 2012 and 2014, and two more in 2015. Today the Apple Valley church is multiplying like some kind of Biblical miracle, on track to become the second-biggest church in the state. Weekly attendance has grown loaves-and-fishes-style to 8,000 in the church’s eight locations. Pastor Rob Ketterling gives the credit to God, saying, ‘We are telling the truth of God’s word.’ But it’s also true that River Valley is on the cusp of the hottest trend in religion — multisite churches.” Can an on-site brewpub be far off?

Soon to come: Better pictures from the sky. Brandi Jewett of the Forum News Service says, “The long-awaited federal rules for operating small unmanned aircraft went into effect at 12:01 a.m., with 30 minutes before sunrise being the earliest that operators could take their drones for a spin. The rules — also known as Part 107 — set standards for commercial flight, which was otherwise banned by the Federal Aviation Administration. Previously, those wanting to fly drones for business needed to submit a petition for an exemption and wait months for it to be granted. Part 107, which covers unmanned aircraft weighing 55 pounds or less, marks a milestone for the growing unmanned industry after years of waiting for regulations to start catching up with the ever-advancing technology.”

There are some nuances here. Jennifer Bjorhus of the Strib writes, “One year after revealing the existence of thousands of unprocessed sexual assault exam kits, most law enforcement agencies in Minnesota are deciding not to test them. … Since then, only about 70 of the old evidence kits have been submitted to crime labs for DNA analysis. … About one-third of Minnesota’s untested kits, or 1,056 kits, came from victims who didn’t want to report the assault or pursue a case, according to the BCA inventory, and so those kits wouldn’t be tested.”

The Donald was in Iowa flipping back from the flop over “softening” his immigration ideas. Says Clay Masters for Iowa Public Radio, “The Republican presidential nominee also talked about immigration policy in terms that showed him returning to his hard-line stance on a key nexus in his platform, after his startling softened rhetoric on the topic just days ago. He said on day one as president, he’ll use immigration law to prevent crimes, ‘including removing the hundreds and thousands of criminal illegal immigrants that have been released into the United States and United States communities under the incompetent Obama/Clinton administration.’ Trump brought out the family of Sarah Root, an Iowa woman who was killed in a car crash by an immigrant in the country illegally.”