Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Was North Out of the Loop?
Vance Boelter is now in custody, but at some point after he shot and killed Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in Brooklyn Park on the morning of June 14, he was on the run in north Minneapolis. And now, as Susan Du reports in the Strib today, some city residents are wondering why they weren’t alerted.
Brooklyn Park sent out a shelter-in-place alert that morning, but no one in Brooklyn Center or north Minneapolis was similarly notified. Minneapolis Office of Community Safety spokesperson Scott Wasserman says police lacked “real-time knowledge about Boelter’s whereabouts in Minneapolis.” Fourth Ward Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw says flatly, “If we needed a stay-in-place order, it would have happened.”
But Du spoke to some folks on the North Side who aren’t satisfied, including those who saw police seize control of Boelter’s Fremont Avenue rental property without explanation. “I wish there was more transparency,” Shawn Lewis, an advocate for park and public safety issues, tells Du. “Why do we have to live under some level of duality?”
GOP Spending Bill Will Make Minnesotans' Lives Worse
As I write this, the U.S. House of Representatives is on the verge of passing, along party lines, a reconciled spending bill (sorry, I refuse to call it by the silly name the carny-in-chief has given it, even in quotes) that would cut $1 trillion in federal Medicaid spending. Some of those “savings” would go to the usual tax cuts for the wealthy while an unconscionable $170 billion would go to ICE, increasing that out-of-control agency's ability to ship masked goons into our neighborhoods and construct concentration camps. Minnesota’s four Republican representatives have already voted for the bill.
Clearly, the results will be bad, but how bad? Well, Sahan Journal has a pair of informative stories on what could happen to Minnesotans if this spending bill passes. The Medicaid cuts will cost the state about $500 million while snatching health care away from between 152,000 and 253,000 Minnesotans. Insurance premiums and costs for health care providers will increase and the uninsured seeking care will fill emergency rooms. "There’s no other option if my kids lose their health coverage,” one woman told Sahan. “There’s nowhere else to go.”
In addition, the bill cuts $186 million in SNAP benefits, fka food stamps. Over 45,000 residents could lose SNAP benefits, as the bill would increase work requirements, eliminate eligibility for legally admitted immigrants, and shift costs to the states. Other cuts “strain the ability of Minnesota agencies and local food banks to help families in need."
Uptown: Always Dying Never Dead
Over at MinnPost, Bill Lindeke offers a typically clear-eyed appraisal of the most talked-about area in Minneapolis. Lindeke participated in last week’s “Uptown Futures Forum,” which he describes as “a room full of mostly older Uptown folk worry[ing] about the future.” In contrast, Lindeke is bullish on the Uptown of tomorrow for reasons that make sense to me. After all, if you think Uptown is dying, try buying a house there.
His diagnosis: Retail is struggling, largely for reasons beyond anyone’s control, and will have to adjust. (Kudos to Lake Street Moxy owner Jim Graves for being willing to say the obvious: Retail owners have to lower rents if they want tenants.) Yet the road construction and repairs underway now, while they hurt business in the short run, will be a boon in the years to come.
“The truth is that Uptown has always been changing,” Lindeke concludes. "It’s always been a neighborhood where generations collide, throwing together young renters fresh out of school with older homeowners looking for peace and quiet.”
Häppy Dü Year
Forty years ago, Hüsker Dü were flying high. With Zen Arcade broadening the trio's audience outside of hardcore circles the year before, they released two unstoppable albums—New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig—and would sign to Warner Bros. by year’s end. The band began this annus mirabilis with a January 30 show at First Ave that was caught on a 24-track recorder but never heard—drum roll please—until now.
The Numero Group, the custodians of the band’s legacy, announced plans yesterday to celebrate Hüsker Dü’s 1985 with an undisclosed series of releases. At the center of this celebration are the First Ave recordings, which were believed lost in a 2011 house fire that eliminated so much of the Hüskers’ archive. We got a taste of that 1985 show yesterday with five tracks released to streaming, and they do showcase a band on top of its game—you can hear Mould’s guitar with a clarity missing on most of their SST releases. Writes the label on Instagram: “We have a bunch of boxes of ephemera, photos, and tapes to go through so sit tight; we’re in the midst of a miracle year.”
