Minnesota
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The majority of health insurers in the state’s individual and small employer health insurance markets will raise premiums between 9% and 15% next year, in yet another sign health care costs are back on the rise.
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Members of a task force in Minnesota are making progress toward issuing a report on how the state might regulate psychedelics, including psilocybin, MDMA and LSD. The group earlier this month held preliminary votes on certain policy recommendations—including on eliminating penalties for personal possession and regulating clinical access to some entheogens—with more votes expected at its next meeting in October. Two recommendations that are already approved by the body are the creation of a state-regulated clinical psilocybin program and the appropriation of research dollars to study the therapeutic use of psilocybin, MDMA and LSD. It will be up to lawmakers, however, to introduce and pass any psychedelics-related legislation to formally enact the suggestions.
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Regulators issued a permit to Magellan Pipeline Company at a hearing last week, keeping in view the objections of several tribal nations who say the pipestone quarried at the national monument and the surrounding areas are central to the spiritual practices of tribes across the continent. “It’s just too much of a risk,” Upper Sioux Community tribal historic preservation officer Samantha Odegard told the commission. Pipestone National Monument was created in 1937 to protect the rights of Indigenous people to quarry pipestone — or catlinite, a soft, red stone used to make pipes and works of art. The National Park Service consults with 23 tribal nations with documented ties to the quarry on the monument’s activities.
arstechnica.com
Last month, in a profile of newly named Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, The New York Times included a throwaway line about "the time his wife had seized his Dreamcast, the Sega video game console, because he had been playing to excess." Weeks later, that anecdote formed the unlikely basis for the unlikely Crazy Taxi: Tim Walz Edition mod, which inserts the Minnesota governor (and top-of-the-ticket running mate Kamala Harris) into the Dreamcast classic driving game. "Rumor has it that Tim Walz played Crazy Taxi so much his wife took his Dreamcast away from him... so I decided to put him in the game," modder Edward La Barbera wrote on the game's Itch.io page.
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The Minnesota Historical Society is digitizing more a hundred years of Native American newspapers, so they can be accessed online. “To be able to just archive our histories as it happens, and especially that first-person perspective,” said Rita Walaszek Arndt, program and outreach manager for Native American Initiatives at the Minnesota Historical Society. “Being able to have those primary sources from the people is really important.”
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> Minnesota has the highest median personal income in the Midwest and boasts a relatively narrow gap between the lowest incomes and the median.
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Minnesota officials certified last week’s primary vote Tuesday, confirming it as the lowest primary turnout since 2016. Fifteen percent of registered voters cast ballots on Aug. 13. This translates to only 12 percent of all eligible voters. In 2016, 7 percent of eligible people voted. “The thing about primaries is it is so dependent on who or what is on the ballot. If there's a hot contest somewhere, then people show up. If not, they tend not to,” said Steve Simon, Minnesota’s Secretary of State.
prospect.org
Michael Rubke, a desk attendant at La Rive condo complex in Minneapolis, is fighting for a union against a behemoth building management company, FirstService Residential of Minnesota, that has a near-monopoly on high-rise condos in the Twin Cities. It’s been a difficult battle so far. The unionization campaign is “at square one,” the 41-year-old explained over the phone after working an overnight shift. “They’re pretending we’re not there.” But that lack of formal union representation did not stop Rubke and his colleagues throughout the Twin Cities from fighting for—and winning—statewide legislation this summer that improves the terms of their jobs, by beating back a little-known provision used to erode the job security of contracted workers. Under the legislation, which went into effect on July 1, companies in Minnesota are barred from entering into new contracts that contain restrictive covenants, which function like noncompete agreements but have previously slipped past the prohibitions on noncompetes in Minnesota because they have a slightly different structure. Existing restrictive covenants, however, are left in place.
sahanjournal.com
*Results update every 15 minutes or less. (Probably won't start trickling in until after 9 pm)
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The Minnesota state primary will be held Tuesday, Aug. 13. Polls close at 8 p.m. Here’s what to expect.
With Walz officially the VP now, what things do we need to explain to those who only see MN as a flyover state? The DFL party? Duck, Duck, Grey Duck? Our pride in our confederate flag? Lutheran sushi? Hotdish? Talking about the ‘91 Halloween blizzard? Ice fishing?
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A Eurasian eagle owl at the Minnesota Zoo flew away from its handler during a training exercise and landed in the tiger habitat, where it was killed by one of the big cats. “Before staff could intervene, the tiger within that habitat preyed upon the owl,” said Zach Nugent, a Minnesota Zoo spokesman, in an email. Officials at the zoo in Apple Valley confirmed that the death happened in April. It was written up in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) report in early July during a routine inspection.
::: spoiler full article Aug 6 (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate on Tuesday, choosing a progressive policy champion and a plain speaker from America's heartland to help win over rural, white voters, said people familiar with the matter. Walz, a 60-year-old U.S. Army National Guard veteran and former teacher, was elected to a Republican-leaning district in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 and served 12 years before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018. As governor, Walz has pushed a progressive agenda that includes free school meals, goals for tackling climate change, tax cuts for the middle class and expanded paid leave for Minnesota workers. Walz has long advocated for women's reproductive rights but also displayed a conservative bent while representing a rural district in the U.S. House, defending agricultural interests and backing gun rights. Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is adding a popular Midwestern politician whose home state votes reliably for Democrats in presidential elections but is close to Wisconsin and Michigan, two crucial battlegrounds. Such states are seen as crucial in deciding this year's election, and Walz is widely seen as skilled at connecting with white, rural voters who in recent years have voted broadly for the Republican Donald Trump, Harris' rival for the White House. The Harris campaign hopes Walz's extensive National Guard career, coupled with a successful run as a high school football coach, and his Dad joke videos, opens new tab will attract such voters who are not yet dedicated to a second Trump term in the White House. Harris, 59, has revived the Democratic Party's hopes of an election victory since becoming its candidate after President Joe Biden, 81, ended his failing reelection bid under party pressure on July 21. Walz was a relative unknown nationally until the Harris "veepstakes" heated up, but his profile has since surged. A popular member of Congress, he reportedly had the backing of powerful former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was instrumental in persuading Biden to leave the race. Harris and Walz will face Trump and his running mate JD Vance, also a military veteran from the Midwest, in a Nov. 5 election. Stumping for Harris, sometimes in a camouflage baseball hat and T-shirt, Walz has attacked Trump and Vance as "weird," a catchy insult that has been picked up by the Harris campaign, social media and Democratic activists. A 'UNICORN' Walz gave the nascent Harris campaign the new attack line in a late July interview: "These are weird people on the other side: They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room," referring to book bans and women's reproductive consultations with doctors. Walz has also attacked the claims by Trump and Vance of having middle class credentials. "They keep talking about the middle class. A robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are? They don't know who we are," Walz said in an MSNBC interview. That approach has struck a chord with the young voters Harris needs to reengage. David Hogg, the co-founder of the gun safety group March for Our Lives, described him as a "great communicator." Walz is "somewhat of a unicorn," said Ryan Dawkins, a political science professor at Minnesota's Carleton College - a man born in a small town in rural Nebraska capable of conveying Harris' message to core Democratic voters, and those that the party has failed to reach in recent years. Dawkins praised his ability to connect with rural voters. It is a group the Biden administration has tried to reach with infrastructure spending and other pragmatic policies, but with little show of messaging success so far. In the 2016 election, Trump won 59% of rural voters; in 2020 that number rose to 65% even though Trump lost the election, according to Pew Research. In the 2022 governor's race, Walz won with 52.27% to his Republican opponent's 44.61%, although swaths of rural Minnesota voted for the opponent. While Walz has supported Democratic Party orthodoxy on issues ranging from legalized abortion and same-sex marriage to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, he also racked up a centrist voting record during his congressional career. He was a staunch defender of government support for farmers and military veterans, as well as gun-owner rights that won praise from the National Rifle Association, according to The Almanac of American Politics. He subsequently registered a failing grade with the NRA after supporting gun-control measures during his first campaign for governor. Walz's shift from a centrist representing a single rural district in Congress to a more progressive politician as governor may have been in response to the demands of voters in major cities like Minneapolis-St. Paul. But it leaves him open to Republican attacks, Dawkins said in a telephone interview. "He runs the risk of reinforcing some of the worst fears people have of Kamala Harris being a San Francisco liberal," Dawkins said. Walz has a ready counter-attack. "What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn and women are making their own healthcare decisions," Walz said in a July CNN interview. "So if that's where they want to label me, I'm more than happy to take the label." As the state's top executive, Walz mandated the use of face coverings during the COVID-19 pandemic and signed a law making marital rape illegal. He presided over several years of budget surpluses in Minnesota on the road to his 2022 reelection. During that campaign, Walz touted the backing of several influential labor unions, including the state AFL-CIO, firefighters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), teachers and others. His tenure was marked by the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murder. Walz assigned the state's attorney general to lead the prosecution in the case, saying people "don't believe justice can be served." Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Richard Cowan; Editing by Heather Timmons and Howard Goller :::
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After more than a quarter century of effort, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has protected a rare wetland with unusual geologic features as part of the state’s newest nature preserve. The 25-acre Icelandite Coastal Fen Scientific and Natural Area, located 11 miles northeast of Grand Marais, preserves one of only two known fens on Lake Superior’s North Shore. A fen is a rare wetland fed by slow-moving groundwater, made up of a thick layer of peat. “We don’t have anything like it protected in the state,” said Judy Elbert, SNA program supervisor for the Minnesota DNR. “The SNA is truly unique, for both its ecological and geological features.” The site features a volcanic lava rock called icelandite, which is rare in the Midwest. It’s a lighter gray than the dark basalt more typically found on the North Shore. Both kinds of rock are about 1.1 billion years old.
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Some of White Bear Lake’s history is at the bottom of the lake. Two underwater archaeologists are working to document it.
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One of the nation’s strictest abortion laws will take effect in Iowa on Monday. Abortion care providers in Minnesota expect an increase in patients as another border state limits abortion access. The Iowa law prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, when fetal cardiac activity can be detected but before many know they are pregnant. The only exceptions to the ban are in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the patient. Previously, Iowa had permitted abortions until 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Heard what sounded like a massive flushing sound from the sky, turns out I was right.
When most immigrants arrived 120 years ago they rode a train from Duluth that crossed a wasteland of clear-cut hills, muskeg swamp, and logging slash. A millennial forest of white pines had just been felled and hauled away, leaving a complex system of undergrowth to scorch and rot in the blistering sun. Invasive whitetail deer foraged in the ruins, lucky heirs to the displaced elk, moose, bears and wolves. Half those immigrants came from southern Europe, places like Italy and the Slavic regions of the Austrian Empire. Upon arrival, they experienced the coldest winters of their lives. Settling in towns like Eveleth, Virginia, Chisholm and Hibbing, these immigrants went into the open pits and underground mines, probing their vocabularies for better words to describe desolation. At first, they were too broke to go home. Some did well and returned to the old country. Some did well and stayed. Many more stayed broke or died prematurely.