Tag: minnesota

Walz Created ‘Snitch Line’ for COVID Mandate Violators

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate for the 2024 presidential election. 

This choice has reignited discussions around Walz’s controversial actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the establishment of a notorious “snitch line” in March 2020.

He and his family have also been under fire for their actions and revealing remarks amid the 2020 BLM riots.

The Post Millennial (TPM) reported that Walz’s administration set up the hotline to encourage Minnesotans to report their neighbors for violating COVID-19 lockdown orders. 

This initiative drew thousands of complaints, with citizens reporting on activities such as going to church, hosting birthday parties, buying nonessential items, and not enforcing mask mandates.

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Tim Walz Was a COVID-19 Tyrant

Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz was a moderate Democrat when he served in the House of Representatives but veered left during his two terms as governor. He referred to socialism as synonymous with neighborliness, pursued an extremely progressive governing agenda, and earned an F from the Cato Institute on fiscal policy.

Another notable thing about Walz is that he served as governor during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thus possible to parse his approach to the virus—and that record is extremely disturbing. Indeed, Walz’s coronavirus policies were extremely heavy-handed and restrictive; under his leadership, the state endured the pandemic in a fundamentally anti-libertarian fashion.

When the coronavirus was first spreading, Walz was an enthusiastic promoter of social distancing rules. He described the crowds in public, outdoor spaces as “a little too big.” He even defended Minnesota’s ridiculous hotline for COVID-19 snitches. That’s right: Walz’s government maintained a method for people to report their neighbors for failing to abide by social distancing rules. Walz insisted in a recent interview that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness”; denouncing one’s neighbors as insufficiently loyal to government policies is a fundamental aspect of socialism, however.

When asked by Republicans to take down the hotline, Walz responded: “We’re not going to take down a phone number that people can call to keep their families safe.”

And though Walz instructed police to merely issue citations to people caught violating stay-at-home orders—which is still bad enough—he also maintained the right, via executive order, to issue $1,000 fines and send violators to jail for 90 days. His government maintained that private, indoor gatherings should be limited to 10 people. Outdoor gatherings were arbitrarily capped at 25 people. On July 23, 2020, Walz declared a statewide mask mandate for most indoor spaces and even some outdoor spaces.

“If we can get a 90 to 95% compliance, which we’ve seen the science shows, we can reduce the infection rates dramatically, which slows that spread and breaks that chain,” Walz said at the time. “This is the way, the cheapest, the most effective way for us to open up our businesses, for us to get our kids back in school, for us to keep our grandparents healthy and for us to get back that life that we all miss so much.”

What followed was the implementation of one of the stupidest COVID-19 rules: Diners at restaurants had to wear masks while walking to their table and moving about the establishment but were allowed to go maskless as long as they were eating and drinking.

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Minnesota Supreme Court Rules That Threatened Person Must Retreat Before Brandishing a Weapon

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in a split decision that a person who is being attacked or threatened must retreat if “reasonably possible” instead of brandishing a weapon.

The court upheld two second-degree convictions of assault with a deadly weapon against a man who was armed with a machete who alleged that he was threated by another man with a knife at a light rail station in Minneapolis in 2021.

A 4–2 decision, issued Wednesday by the state’s high court, said that Minnesota law stipulates that there is a “duty to retreat” when reasonably possible before using deadly force. That applies when the person faces bodily harm, the judges ruled.

In its decision Wednesday, the state court wrote that the “duty to retreat when reasonably possible—a judicially created element of self-defense—applies to persons who claim they were acting in self-defense when they committed the felony offense of second-degree assault-fear with a device designed as a weapon and capable of producing death or great bodily harm.”

The plaintiff in the case, Earley Romero Blevins, brandished a machete after a man with a knife allegedly threated him at a rail station in Minnesota. The man approached Blevins as he was arguing with a woman, according to Blevins, who said that the man armed with the knife told him to come to a shelter at the station so he “could slice” his throat.

Blevins had argued that he feared for his life and was acting in self-defense when he produced the machete, according to the ruling. The justices, however, said that after they reviewed video footage of the incident, they found that he had ample opportunity to leave the situation.

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Updated Minnesota Law Allows Recreational Marijuana Smoking In Public, But Not In Apartments

Minnesota has some of the nation’s most permissive rules for smoking and vaping cannabis, being one of just a handful of states that allows public consumption. Aside from some local ordinances that are more restrictive, those 21 and older generally can smoke and vape wherever tobacco smoking is allowed.

But a date change in the state’s recreational marijuana and hemp law passed in May imposed a new restriction on private consumption that started July 1: Owners of multifamily housing must now ban smoking and vaping of cannabis. The restriction was contained in 2023’s House File 100 but it wasn’t to take effect until March of 2025.

There is a significant exception to that apartment ban, however. Medical cannabis users who are registered with the program and have a medical card must be allowed to use smokable and vapable cannabis, even in multifamily housing.

The ban was pushed last year by Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) as one condition for his support for HF 100. Because there were no GOP votes for the bill, every DFL member’s support was needed. As a compromise with bill sponsors, the effectiveness date was set for next March. That was the same time other provisions of the recreational law were to take effect and coincided when sponsors estimated the first recreational dispensaries would open for business.

This year it was determined that the March 2025 date was unworkable for various reasons. First, in order to enforce restrictions on sales of raw cannabis flower being marketed as hemp, the Office of Medical Cannabis needed to be merged with the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) sooner. Second, so as to allow some cannabis cultivators to begin growing this fall, OCM needed to have jurisdiction over the rules governing medical cannabis cultivation right away, not next spring.

Changing the effectiveness dates of those provisions had the coincident effect of advancing the ban on smoking and vaping in multifamily housing. Existing clean indoor air laws and ordinances ban smoking of tobacco or cannabis in common areas of buildings—lobbies, hallways, laundry rooms and common outdoor areas. But until last month, apartment owners and managers could ban smoking in individual units but weren’t required to. Now they are, at least for cannabis.

Residents can still possess marijuana in multifamily housing and can likely grow plants under limits in the law. And they can use products such as edibles that don’t require combustion via smoking or vaping.

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Police are Using Drones More and Spending More For Them

Police in Minnesota are buying and flying more drones than ever before, according to an annual report recently released by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Minnesotan law enforcement flew their drones without a warrant 4,326 times in 2023, racking up a state-wide expense of over $1 million. This marks a large, 41 percent increase from 2022, when departments across the state used drones 3,076 times and spent $646,531.24 on using them. The data show that more was spent on drones last year than in the previous two years combined. Minneapolis Police Department, the state’s largest police department, implemented a new drone program at the end of 2022 and reported that its 63 warrantless flights in 2023 cost nearly $100,000.

Since 2020, the state of Minnesota has been obligated to put out a yearly report documenting every time and reason law enforcement agencies in the state — local, county, or state-wide — used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, without a warrant. This is partly because Minnesota law requires a warrant for law enforcement to use drones except for specific situations listed in the statute. The State Court Administrator is also required to provide a public report of the number of warrants issued for the use of UAVs, and the data gathered by them. These regular reports give us a glimpse into how police are actually using these devices and how often. As more and more police departments around the country use drones or experiment with drones as first responders, it offers an example of how transparency around drone adoption can be done.

You can read our blog about the 2021 Minnesota report here.

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Woman Faces Possible 30-Year Prison Sentence In Minnesota For Possessing Bong Water

Last year the Legislature decriminalized drug paraphernalia, even if it contains drug residue. The change represented a step back from the drug war tactics of previous decades, with an eye toward treating substance abuse as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice concern.

But one obscure relic of the war on drug paraphernalia got overlooked, and was not included in the decriminalization bill: a provision in state law that treats bong water—the water at the bottom of a smoking device, used to cool and purify the intoxicating smoke—as a controlled substance, no different than the uncut version of whatever illicit drug the bong was used to smoke.

People don’t consume bong water, but some prosecutors still use it as evidence to charge drug defendants with more serious crimes than they otherwise would be eligible for.

Just ask Jessica Beske.

On May 8, the 43-year-old Fargo resident was pulled over for speeding on Highway 59 in Polk County, Minnesota, according to charging documents. Deputies smelled marijuana and searched the car, where they allege they found a bong, a glass jar containing a “crystal substance” and some items of paraphernalia, including pipes.

The residue on the paraphernalia tested positive for methamphetamine, as did the water in the bong and the substance in the glass jar. Deputies further reported that the bong water weighed 8 ounces and, somewhat confusingly, that the crystal substance weighed 13.2 grams “in total with the packaging.”

Beske says the “packaging” is the glass jar, and that the reason deputies included the jar in the weight is that there wasn’t a measurable quantity of substance in it. She maintains she had no drugs on her, only paraphernalia containing residue. That’s precisely the sort of offense that lawmakers decriminalized in the 2023 bill.

But the Polk County prosecutor has instead charged her with first-degree felony possession, which carries a penalty of up to 30 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.

It’s because of the bong water.

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Minnesota Marijuana Regulators Destroy Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars’ Worth Of Illegally Sold Hemp Flower

Since Minnesota began cracking down on the illegal sale of raw cannabis flower in many registered hemp retailers, its agents have confiscated a lot of product worth a fair amount of money.

According to numbers released by the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), inspectors have confiscated and destroyed 12,094 units of flower—such as bags, jars or pre-rolled joints—with an estimated retail value of $278,000. The illegal products were taken from 58 different retail locations and amounted to nearly 73 pounds of raw cannabis flower.

While it has been legal to possess and use cannabis in Minnesota since last August, it is not yet legal to sell it and won’t be until sometime next spring. And while many hemp-derived low-potency products like gummies and beverages have been legal to sell since the summer of 2022, raw cannabis flower falls into a gray area. That is, if it has low THC content, it could be legal. But most of what has been sold exceeds the potency levels that separates hemp from marijuana.

If the confiscated products have likely been illegal under both the 2022 hemp-derived products law and the 2023 recreational cannabis law, why did it take this long for the state to crack down? Blame an inadvertent gap in the 2023 law that attempted to provide temporary state regulation of hemp products while the new Office of Cannabis Management was being set up.

The Office of Medical Cannabis was given temporary say over the two-year-old hemp-derived market but was not given control over raw flower, only products made from the plant like gummies and drinks.

That gap identified by regulators late last year allowed some stores to sell the flower that looks, smells and intoxicates like marijuana. At the same time, other retailers who wanted to follow the new law were left at a competitive disadvantage.

The raw flower was often sold as a hemp plant with high concentrations of THCA (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid). The same products are offered for sale from out-of-state businesses and mailed to customers where cannabis is not legal, or not yet legal as in Minnesota.

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Making Over $141K, Minneapolis Mayor Thanks Biden For Student Loan Forgiveness

If you weren’t already infuriated by Joe Biden’s exploitation of the federal student loan program as a means of buying votes and redistributing wealth, this should do the trick. 

On Wednesday, Minneapolis Mayor Melvin Carter — who earns makes takes $140,814 a year before benefits — rushed to Twitter to thank President Biden for erasing his remaining student debt, sharing a screen shot showing his outstanding balance had turned to zero. 

The latest drip in the fiscal Chinese water torture that’s being inflicted on responsible, productive Americans came earlier that day, with Biden announcing he was cancelling another $7.7 billion of debt. With that, the total such debt wiped away by his administration has reached $167 billion.  

After emphasizing that the average beneficiary of Biden’s self-serving abuse of taxpayers has had $35,000 in debt forgiven, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fielded a challenging question from, of all sources, NBC News. Correspondent Peter Alexander asked, “Why don’t those individuals who didn’t receive $35,000 in debt cancellation deserve a $35,000 check from other Americans for what other means they would want to use it?”

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Minnesota Democratic state senator jailed after being accused of breaking into home

That’s not constituent service.

A Minnesota state senator was arrested early Monday on suspicion of first-degree burglary — hundreds of miles from her home turf.

Nicole Mitchell, a 49-year-old first-term Democrat who reps the Twin Cities suburbs of Woodbury and Maplewood, was taken into custody after a homeowner called police in Detroit Lakes — 220 miles to the northwest — to report an intruder, according to local reports.

Mitchell, a former TV and radio meteorologist and a commander in the Air National Guard, was booked into the Becker County Jail, where she remained as of Monday afternoon, according to online records.

Becker County Sheriff Todd Glander told The Post that he expected a criminal complaint against the lawmaker to be filed Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Minnesota Senate Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party said in a statement the party was “aware of the situation and has no comment pending further information.”

Currently, Democrats hold a 34-33 majority in the 67-member Minnesota Senate.

The chamber’s Republican leader, Mark Johnson, said in a separate statement: “The public expects Legislators to meet a high standard of conduct. As information comes out, we expect the consequences to meet the actions, both in the court of law, and in her role at the legislature.”

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Minnesota Lawmakers Propose Raft Of Changes To State Marijuana Law, Including Homegrow And Equity Adjustments

The lead sponsors of 2023’s recreational cannabis law are sensitive to suggestions that the sweeping law needs “fixing.” Such a word might be interpreted as endorsing Republican talking points that the bill—along with much of the work of the 2023 session—was rushed and that mistakes were made.

Instead, top sponsors of House File 100 say changes they are both proposing, as well others filed by other lawmakers, are expected and routine. The law will be “modified,” not fixed.

“As I said many times last year, it won’t be the last time the Legislature hears a cannabis bill,” said Sen. Lindsey Port, the Burnsville DFLer who was the lead sponsor in the Senate. “Prohibition of alcohol ended nearly 100 years ago and we still have a liquor bill nearly every year.”

That said, what is being proposed to change the law at the midpoint between legalization and retail sales? Both Port and Rep. Zack Stephenson (DFL-Coon Rapids) have said they expect to have an omnibus cannabis bill that will contain all changes in one package.

The Office of Cannabis Management’s 100-page proposal—Senate File 4782/House File 4757—is the stage setter. Even though these bills show Port and Stephenson as sponsors, they put their name on top as a courtesy to the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM). Their own work will likely be affixed to the OCM bill.

The long list of changes would adjust how so-called social equity licenses are distributed, change the ownership ratios for such license holders, bring the hemp-derived market regulation under the Office of Cannabis Management sooner and put numerical caps on each type of license rather than let OCM decide how many the market requires. Many of the changes were suggested as ways to get to the same end point as HF 100 but with less risk of litigation.

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