Sahan Journal’s Becky Dernbach and reporting from The Markup says, “Fifty dollars a month can get you very different CenturyLink internet service depending on where in Minneapolis you live, according to a new data analysis by Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin at The Markup, an investigative tech news site. In lower-income neighborhoods like Cedar-Riverside or Near North, you can get basic internet service of 10 megabits per second — below the federal definition of broadband. … Yet in other, higher-income parts of the city like Kingfield or Longfellow, CenturyLink offers a range of faster options. One plan provides service of 500 megabits per second — 50 times faster. The price for this 500-megabit plan available in wealthier neighborhoods? The same as the 10-megabit plan in lower-income neighborhoods: $50 — plus $15 a month to rent a modem.”
A Pioneer Press story says, “The COVID-19 pandemic spared no state or region as it caused historic learning setbacks for America’s children, erasing decades of academic progress and widening racial disparities, according to results of a national test that provide the sharpest look yet at the scale of the crisis. … Minnesota no longer leads the nation in math, the test results show, and its latest reading scores fell to about the national averages. … The findings come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as the ‘nation’s report card’ — which tested hundreds of thousands of fourth and eighth graders across the country this year.”
At yahoo!news, Michael Lee writes, “Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is under fire for claiming he doesn’t know anyone who supports defunding the police despite appearing at a campaign event for Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., just days before. ‘I don’t know anybody who thinks we should defund the police,’ Ellison said during a debate on Sunday. But critics were quick to point out that Ellison knew at least two people who supported the Defund the Police movement, with the Republican National Committee pointing out that the incumbent attorney general had attended a rally in support of Omar and Rep. Cori Bush, D–Mo., both of whom have expressed support for calls to limit police funding.”
For MPR News, Dan Gunderson reports, “Minnesota Senate District 2 boundaries were redrawn this year, shifting to the east to encompass the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. The district now includes Red Lake, Leech Lake and White Earth, the three largest tribal nations located in Minnesota. DFL candidate Alan Roy expects to get strong support from Native voters.”
A KMSP-TV story says, “The sunfish an angler recently caught in northern Minnesota has tied a state record, according to the Minnesota DNR. Aaron Ardoff on Sept. 18 caught a 1-pound, 12-ounce hybrid sunfish (a cross between two species of sunfish) from Green Lake in Kandiyohi County, which the Minnesota DNR has certified as tying the state’s weight-based record.”
A Duluth News Tribune story by Peter Passi says, “The former St. Louis County Jail in Duluth will be renamed Leijona and will be repurposed as a 33-unit apartment building. Leijona, pronounced lay-oh-nah, is the Finnish word for lion, and developer Meghan Elliott said the building draws the inspiration for its name and logo from some of the ornamentation on the structure’s granite facade. She noted that prominent images of lions actually are worked into the neoclassical revival stone exteriors of buildings throughout the surrounding Civic Center campus. ‘Nobody wants to live in a building called a jail, right?’ Elliott said.”
A CNET.com piece by Katie Teague says, “Social Security and Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries are getting an 8.7% cost of living adjustment, or COLA, starting in January. However, SSI recipients will get their first increased payment in December this year. … The Social Security Administration has a strict schedule it follows when sending out monthly payments. For those who receive SSI, their payments are almost always sent out on the first of each month. There are two reasons why your payment wouldn’t arrive on the first of any month: If the regular payment date falls on a holiday or a weekend. In January 2023, the first of the month falls on a holiday and a weekend. When this happens, the administration sends the checks earlier on the nearest business day — in this case, a Friday. So instead of receiving your January 2023 check in January, you’ll get it in December of 2022.”
For Sports Illustrated, we have this season’s first power-rankings: Says Kyle Wood: “13. Minnesota Timberwolves (Record: 2–1) There’s no way around it: Losing to the Jazz in the first meeting after the Gobert trade is a tough look. Minnesota’s new big man has been a rebounding machine, though, grabbing 18 boards per contest, and there’s still plenty left on offense after what the Timberwolves traded away to get him—seven players averaged 13-plus points through the first three games. It’s hard to read much into a pair of wins against the Thunder, and the upcoming schedule against the Spurs (three times within a week), and the Lakers won’t tell too much about the state of the T-Wolves, either.”
At MPR News, Paul Huttner says, “September was the driest on record for the Twin Cities with just .24” of rainfall. Now, October looks very likely to be among the top 10 driest on record in the Twin Cities and much of Minnesota. … The forecast maps look mainly dry for the rest of this week into Halloween. It looks very likely that we’ll finish October with somewhere around .20” of rainfall in the Twin Cities. That would be the 6th driest October on record dating back to 1871. … We’re down nearly 10 inches now below average precipitation in the Twin Cities and much of southern Minnesota this year.”
Supporting changes in the way our police officers operate has morphed into defund the police. I think its a defense mechanism used by supporters of the status quo to avoid, for the umpteenth time, having to do anything about police violence and holding offending officers to account. 43% of Minneapolis voters supported eliminating the MPD and replacing it with an office of public safety. That’s not an insignificant number and they voted this way after months of negative campaigning by the same folks who keep screeching about defund the police.
Well HT, 43% is a lower number than ~56%. Since spring of 2020 there have been ~ 200+/- murders in Mpls, evidently in your mind and the other ~43%, those dead folks don’t seem to count much, as you appear to prefer, that as a city, we do nothing about it! Who catch’s the killers, car jacker’s, thieves, assaulter s etc. if not the police?
Yes, and now it’s apparently devolving into the semantics of what the slogan “defund” meant to those using it. Did even the harshest critic intend it to mean “no funds”?
Ellison should probably have just said he supported police reform after the outrageous killing of Floyd, and still does. It doesn’t mean he ever thought there should be no police, which is the color that Repubs are now trying to paint all advocates for meaningful reform, as far as I can tell.
But of course the entire reason that the country even began talking about police reform (including the fact that strong majorities for reform existed in that summer of 2020!) has now been flushed down the memory hole, largely by the successful efforts of the “conservative” movement.
Exactly.
I’d wager that at least 43% of voters would still support moving the MPD into a new Department of Public Safety.
And for all the screeching about “defunding” (there are way too many low-information people that think it actually happened), we are giving the MPD more money than ever.
You can give them all the money in the world, but how they spend it is another story. Lets give it to a non profit and watch the funds be wasted like the “Feed the Children” fiasco. When democRATs are in charge there will be waste and fraud as we have observed year after year.
Support it Ed, like the Iraq War was well spent and not wasted $.
The discrimination in internet services reminded me that the Tr**p FCC repealed “net neutrality” rules which I believe prevented internet service providers from discrimination in service and pricing. Having those rules restored might help bring an end to such discrimination.
Institutional racism is STRONG and subtle. We need to share more data on how POC are discriminated against by government and the private sector. The Markup report showed this phenomenon is nation wide. POC neighborhoods get charged the same or more for worse internet access.
Century Link, You didn’t mention the part about the crashing service? You know intermittent service, solid for maybe 2 weeks then down, up, down, 10-20 times a day! You also forgot the part where they say you got 30Mbs but when you run the speed tests it never comes close, nor the part about spending 20 minutes going through automated phone jail when calling to report the outage, then the 20 minutes waiting for a technician, or the 3-4-5 times you need to reboot the modem, or the failure of their automated checking to actually find any problems, or telling you to go on line to trouble shoot your internet offline problem, or ask you what you are calling about and after you tell them they come back with a text what are you calling about! We need to make an appointment, OK, next text, what are you calling about? And then of course there is the yes you will be credited for the down time, and of course that never shows up.