by Craig Willms
Scandal and Fraud. It sounds like a law firm. We Minnesotans see these words nearly as often as we see those commercials for personal injury firms. For being a small state smack in the center of the North American land mass Minnesota has had outsized impact on the national scene. Unfortunately, none of it is good. The issues or events go back years now, and they keep coming. It seems as if on cue, it's Tuesday, there must be another scam uncovered. This month Federal auditors looking into Medicaid discovered scam after scam.
In the news media it's been reported that the total for all these scams and fraudulent activity is at one billion dollars. From a resident's and a taxpayer's point of view this is incompetence at an epic level. But it's not just state treasure it's also federal money, shovels full of cold hard cash... Tim Walz and the Democrats are saying as little as possible, kind of "aw shucks, some not very nice people took advantage of the crisis..." Nothing about their own overwhelming incompetence time after time. But if they just lay low and count on the local media to ignore these scandals it will all go away.
Such is the curse of Minnesota politics. One party rule. No matter how close we are to a 50-50 state in this two-party system we are always completely dominated by one party. Part of it is just momentum, part of it is built-in, but it's also about the opposition. Historically it's always the same - the GOP - worse than pathetic. The Minnesota GOP is feckless, uninspiring. Nationally the GOP is getting smarter or so it seems. It remains to be seen if they'll revert to form once Trump is gone.
Through some unspoken protection agreement, the Federal government has allowed the state of Minnesota to import tens of thousands of Somalians and Minneapolis opened its arms. As with most immigrants they congregate in communities where they can acclimate to the new society with people like them. This was also true when Hmong immigrants were relocated here after Vietnam. The difference is in the assimilation, the Hmong dispersed and melted into the culture. Within two generations the Hmong became full-fledged Americans. This is the way America was built. Not so with those of Muslim faith, the faith of most Somalians. Somalis don't become Americans and don't melt into the culture. They may be American in official quarters, but they are not Americans. Therefore, they have no fealty to America. If Governor Walz and his DFL party are going to let them perpetrate fraud they'll oblige.
One billion dollars stolen from Minnesota and most of it involved Somalians. They didn't do it alone. It begs the question we have to ask, was it really incompetence or was it planned? With the natural population moving rightward over the years bringing us so close to a 50-50 state you would not expect pure socialists to be on the rise. Yet here we are. The next mayor of Minneapolis might be an immigrant from Somalia. He is an avowed socialist - perhaps a communist. Yeah sure, it's Minneapolis a deep blue city in a purple state, but a communist mayor? What?
In St Paul, the twin in the Twin Cities, we have an all-female city council and a black mayor. Hardly an old boys club. St Paul is similarly mismanaged being completely dominated by Democrats and their socialist tendencies. Taxes keep rising and the roads are still crumbling, and businesses continue to leave. Things are marginally better in the saintly city, but as we joke St Paul sucks but at least we're not Minneapolis. Yeah, go ahead and laugh, but it's not funny.
So far St Paul, other than being the capitol city and home of the Democratic Socialists, hasn't splashed the national headlines. There's still time.
Why should any of this matter to the rest of the country? I contend that Minnesota is the proving ground for radicals and radical agendas. Case in point, going back decades now Minnesota perpetrated an election fraud that stripped Senator Coleman of his seat in Washington DC. After Coleman had been declared the winner, a recount was demanded. Stuart Smally aka Al Franken defeated Coleman by a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Somehow, magically, the vote swung toward Smally after ballots were "found". Shortly thereafter this scenario repeated itself in other states - always landing in the Democrats favor, always. Does anyone remember the 2020 election? I thought so.
Why Minnesota? For one the perennially weak GOP and two a sleepy, go-along-to-get-along populace. Enough people are wise to game, the dominance of officialdom by the DFL, political or otherwise, but there's no real pushback. Thus, the curse of one-party rule.
What could go wrong? Everyone one will remember George Floyd. The leftwing hate machine instantly framed the narrative. Racist police brutality. It spread like wildfire. No one in the media, none of our elected DFL leaders even challenged the narrative. No one urged caution and a wait and see investigation. Walz, the governor waited days to call up the national guard as the city burned. The whole country, even people around the world watched on their TVs as this inconsequential city in the corn belt burned. When discontented people around the country saw what was being allowed, well, suddenly it was everywhere. The cities governed by a Democratic machine like we have here in Minnesota would never disavow the narrative - and their cities burned. The George Floyd event served the greater narrative that America is irredeemably racist. It elevated the Black Lives Matter movement into prominence and eventually into violence. The whole culture became reverent to all non-white people, where white people across the nation bent the knee in some strange ritual. Since it was a forgone conclusion four Minneapolis policemen went to prison for the death of St. George. Billions of dollars in property damage, lives ruined, businesses lost, whole neighborhoods disfigured and no one else gets any blame? Any real investigation and real justice would see governors and mayors in a jail cell rather than four cops.
Wouldn't you know it after all that Minnesota voters rewarded Walz, reelecting him. Since then, the state legislature is exactly 50-50, and all kinds of trouble revolved around that situation. Yet every constitutional state office is in Democrat hands, since they also were reelected. One party dominance pervades every department and agency. It's so entrenched that contrary thinking would be grounds for being committed.
This is why the state is at the center of multiple large government money scandals, no one questions anything, or perhaps they are involved somehow. I don't think Walz is in it for the money. He's in it because he's a subversive, he wants to see the failure our capitalist, free market system. He's the last of the true believers. His constant trips to China, invited by the CCP, had raised red flags with Homeland Security and the intelligence community. When he was selected as the Vice-Presidential candidate the chatter out of China as recently revealed by DHS and the FBI was pure praise. If Kamala had won the CCP would have its mole a heartbeat from the presidency.
To say we dodged a bullet is an understatement. My question is why did we have learn about all this weird behavior by Walz from the national media only after he had been selected as Harris' running mate? Where was the local media? Of course, I'm joking, the local media is either completely inept or completely in the pocket of the DFL. It doesn't matter which is true, our local media is beyond hope.
Because Walz was brought into the national spotlight and continues to put himself in the news cycle the Minnesota scandals are getting attention. The $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme saw dozens of convictions, yet not one state official was fingered. Walz still enjoys decent popularity polls in Minnesota. This is what sticks in my craw. What is wrong with Minnesota? Aw shucks, it's just some not very nice people taking advantage of a crisis. Yeah, we've heard that before.
