The Topline: Turkey insurrection?

Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed.

Government receipts running nearly 7% above projection

Minnesota Management and Budget released its latest revenue update last week. It showed that for the fiscal year starting in July, government receipts are running about half a billion dollars higher than expected. 

What do 100 years of late fees look like?

A book checked out in 1919 was finally returned to the library recently, MPR News reports. A library staffer told MPR late fees were a penny a day back then, which according to library staff would add up to something like $36,000 by today.

The library, however, got rid of late fees in 2019, and they encourage anyone still holding on to a hilariously overdue book to return it.

Minnesota one of just a handful of states with a news outlet in every county

Axios mapped the Medill Local News Initiative’s data on the geography of news outlets in the U.S. The big finding is that several hundred U.S. counties don’t have any local news source, with many more in the South and rural West home to just one.

Minnesota, by contrast, has one of the healthiest local news economies, with two or more outlets in virtually every county and just a handful with only one. In my own rinky-dink county of 4,000 people, for instance, there are still two local newspapers: the Red Lake Falls Gazette and the Oklee Herald. Neither have a web presence to speak of, but they both churn out physical copies weekly.

Meanwhile, predatory hedge funds continue to do everything they can to make those numbers even worse.

The Sconnies are getting restless

The Wisconsin subreddit recently released a detailed map of their plans to annex Michigan’s Upper Peninsula along with land originally ceded to Minnesota as part of the Louisiana Purchase. However, not everyone in the Reddit community of 223,000 members is ready to go along.

One reasoned that Minnesota has “better pay, a functional government, and legal weed. They’ll fight to keep that happiness. Maybe instead, we let them annex us?” Another pointed out that “many Minnesotans left Wisconsin for a reason. We know what you do over there and we want no part of it.”

Odds of a successful turkey insurrection highest in Little Falls

Speaking of hostile takeovers, the Star Tribune recently explored how Minnesota became the country’s capital of turkey production. Last year there were 37 million of the birds residing at the various farms and processing centers in the state, or about 6 per human.

Now, if the turkeys all got together and decided to throw off the yoke of their masters we’d have a bit of a problem. The average able-bodied Minnesotan could probably win a fight against 6 turkeys, but the birds aren’t distributed evenly throughout the state. 

The Star Tribune took turkey population data from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and mapped it against the human population distribution. In certain towns turkeys outnumber humans by 100, 500 or even 1,000-to-one. Little Falls would likely be the nerve center of any hypothetical turkey uprising, with a ratio of 1,300 birds per person.

Once Little Falls goes the turkeys could sweep down I-94 toward the Twin Cities, taking Alexandria and St. Cloud as they go. Happy Thanksgiving!