Lightning Round -- 082916

Things keep rolling:

• Not much new to report on the slam dunk ruling against the City of New Brighton. The only things I've heard are second- or third-hand reports and I'm not comfortable with saying anything more until I know more. My sense is the folks responsible for the debacle have to go through their own Kubler-Ross process. I will continue to watch events, however.
• An alert reader pointed me to this story involving the city council of Lake Elmo. In this case, a city council member was censured twice for calling public attention to an $11 million shortfall, because in doing so he brought a spotlight on the performance of the city finance director. The situation in Lake Elmo is, if anything, even more dire than what's been happening here in New Brighton. It may not mean anything, but the reader noticed something interesting that relates to the New Brighton matter -- the city attorney of  Lake Elmo and the new city attorney of New Brighton are both the same individual, Sarah Sonsalla. As I said, it may not mean anything, but it's an odd coincidence.
• On the national scene, not much seems to change. Every day brings new evidence of corruption from the Clintons, but it doesn't seem to matter very much to the electorate, or at least those who are being polled. It's no surprise that local governments assume they can get away with anything they desire -- if corruption isn't an issue on the national level, how worked up are you allowed to be on what happens locally?