Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
Don’t Call It an Opaque Pre-Election Marketing Ploy: Operation Endeavor Is Working, City Democrats Say Ahead of Midterms
How popular is Operation Endeavor, the vague, inter-agency Minneapolis crime-fighting program that’s definitely real and not at all a fart of buzzwords to make Democrats appear Serious About Crime before Nov. 8? Let’s hear from newly minted Community Safety Commissioner Cedric Alexander, speaking to reporters Monday: "I was downtown the other night, and there were people chanting down the street, [at] all these police officers, 'Yo, Operation Endeavor!' You like hearing that kind of thing." Nothing entirely made up to hear there, folks!
Dutifully, reporters from around the metro scrambled to issue maximally credulous reports on declining violent crime numbers, which Alexander, Mayor Jacob Frey, and MPD leaders tied to Op Endev. "Gun-related violence, carjackings decrease during Minneapolis' 'Operation Endeavor,'" screamed a KARE 11 headline. “Officials did not provide specifics about how Operation Endeavor, which launched earlier this fall, played a part,” the Star Tribune acknowledged. Critics have pointed to irregular data sets, as well as the seasonal decline in crime we witness every fall. “Is [Operation Endeavor] the only cause of that drop? Of course not,” Frey said of the 28-day-old program that—get this—uses “data” to allocate “resources” to fight crime. “But we know that it's working."
Jensen: Why Can’t Minnesota Be Iowa?
“Let’s be more like Iowa” is an unusual pitch to Minnesota voters, who have not traditionally viewed our southern neighbor as a source of aspiration. But that’s what Scott Jensen is bringing to the table as the governor’s race enters its final week. At Jensen’s invitation, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds was, well, out walking around Golden Valley to talk shit about our state and criticize our “lockdown governor” (we did not have a lockdown ffs). "Jensen agreed with a reporter's observation that he's campaigning to align Minnesota's policies with those in Iowa," Fox 9 reported. Jensen, who for some reason believes a decrease in tax revenue would benefit Minnesota, possibly envies Iowa’s 3.9% flat tax, which offers a notoriously regressive benefit to wealthy people like doctors and former NFL players. Maybe becoming Iowa is preferable to becoming Wisconsin, which is well on its way to gerrymandering itself into a de facto one-party state. But remaining Minnesota is preferable to both. For a good laugh, by the way, Google “Scott Jensen” and “Iowa.”
Sun Country Employees to Vote on Unionizing
Unions—they’re everywhere these days. The reasons are obvious (the ruling class wants to grind us all into paste). Now the tendrils of solidarity are sinking deeper into the airline industry, as 270 Sun Country fleet employees are set to vote on whether to join the Teamsters. (The ballots ship tomorrow and must be returned by January 4.) The group, which includes ramp agents and the folks who load and unload planes, is the second set of the airline’s employees to seek unionization this year—Sun Country mechanics voted to unionize in June. "We fully respect the right of our employees to decide whether they want to be represented by a union,” a Sun Country rep said meaninglessly. Sun Country is the second largest airline to use Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport as a hub. The largest, Delta, is the only other major airline whose fleet employees are not unionized. Delta’s pilots are unionized, though, and they just voted to authorize a strike. Labor unrest! We love to see it!
DNR Proposes 13 New Critters, Plants for Enemies List
OK, maybe “high-risk invasive aquatic plants, fish, and invertebrates” list is more accurate and less Nixonian. On Halloween, the Minnesota Department of Resources dropped the names of 13 such spooky lifeforms who could be prohibited from spreading throughout the state via new regulations. Their names are simultaneously whimsical and terrifying. Among ‘em: jumping worms, mitten crabs, snakehead fish, tubenose gobies, eastern mosquitofish, and the dreaded walking catfish. (Hey, walking catfish, walk your ass back to Southeast Asia!) Click here to see the whole list. Opponents and, yes, even defenders of these invasive, wilderness-threatening beasts are welcome to contact DNR during a public comment period that lasts through Dec. 9. After that date, they’ll likely join the state’s motley collection of environmental baddies that includes OGs like zebra mussels, Eurasian watermilfoil, common buckthorn, and emerald ash borer.
