On the menu today: A new report contends that Minnesota governor Tim Walz is on the short list to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. This is almost laughable when you look at Walz’s record running the state government, which somehow manages to combine the honesty of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, the competence of former Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, and the sharp-eyed ethical-watchdog instincts of soon-to-be-former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez. A whole lot of shady and unethical people in Minnesota see the state government as a giant pile of money just waiting to be taken, with a sleepy guard in the form of the governor. Meanwhile, it may be necessary to file a missing-persons report on the current president, and it’s worth noting that school-voucher opponents still don’t trust Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro.
The Walz Is Closing In
Bloomberg News: “Kamala Harris is considering a wide range of vice presidential candidates from the Democratic Party’s bench, though people familiar with the process say a short list has emerged including three elected officials with nationwide appeal: Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.”
The dirty, not-so-little not-so-secret about Walz is that he’s not a good manager. On his watch, the Minnesota government has endured one embarrassing scandal after another entailing mismanagement, fraud, waste, and abuse.
(Whenever I write something critical of a political figure, someone will accuse me of being a conduit for some opposition-research dump. Nope, this is just a matter of me googling for a few minutes. Some other reporters should try it — they’d be amazed at what they learn.)
Let’s start with the state’s handing hundreds of millions of dollars to Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future, the largest Covid-aid fraud scheme in the country.
The Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. Announcing the federal fraud indictment against the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, FBI director Christopher Wray called it “an egregious plot to steal public funds meant to care for children in need in what amounts to the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme yet. The defendants went to great lengths to exploit a program designed to feed underserved children in Minnesota amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, fraudulently diverting millions of dollars designated for the program for their own personal gain.” The nonprofit reportedly used a quarter of a billion dollars in federal funds to purchase luxury cars, houses, jewelry, and coastal resort property abroad.
What does this have to do with Governor Tim Walz, you ask? Well, a state legislative audit concluded that the Minnesota Department of Education was asleep at the wheel and for years had ignored red flags concerning the nonprofit.
From those noted right-wingers at, er, the local CBS News affiliate:
The report from the legislative auditor found that the Minnesota Department of Education’s last review of Feeding Our Future was in 2018, and while it found serious issues with the nonprofit’s operations — including that it did not collect enrollment information from sites — it failed to follow up. . . .
Over the course of several reviews, the department found that Feeding Our Future lacked financial resources and dedicated accounting staff, and noted that staff salaries were above average.
Still, the report said that by 2019, the nonprofit managed more than six times the number of sites than the average multi-site sponsor participating in the program. The department’s payments to Feeding Our Future also increased by 2,800% between 2020 and 2021.
“Time and time again over the four years it participated in the federal nutrition programs, MDE missed opportunities to hold Feeding Our Future accountable,” Legislative Auditor Judy Randall told the Legislative Audit Commission Thursday.
Between June 2018 and December 2021, the department received more than 30 complaints about the organization — ranging from unethical practices to demanding kickbacks from vendors — which must be investigated by law.
But the department’s investigation procedures were “of limited usefulness” in the context of alleged fraud, the auditor found. At one point, the education department asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself.
Some of the complaints weren’t looked into at all, “despite their frequency and seriousness.”
Every state government deals with waste, fraud, and abuse. But no other state has ever gotten taken to the cleaners to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars.
But we’re just getting started.
“Hero pay” wasted on dead people. In 2022, Walz signed into law a plan to pay Minnesota’s frontline workers “hero pay” for their hard work during the pandemic. The state’s initial estimate was that roughly 667,000 people were eligible for hero pay, meaning they would receive $750 each. But within a few months, the state announced that more than a million Minnesotans had qualified, reducing the payment to $487.45.
If an estimate that’s off by roughly 333,000 people raises your eyebrow, you have good instincts.
Not only were a significant portion of recipients ineligible, some of them didn’t have a pulse.
Alas, the “Department of Labor and Industry, the agency tasked with overseeing and implementing the Minnesota Frontline Worker Pay Program, did not comply with requirements for the program,” according to a state auditor. The auditor’s report concluded that less than 60 percent of recipients of the bonuses were eligible, the eligibility of 32 percent of recipients could not be verified, and 9 percent were definitely ineligible, including some who were deceased.
The full report can be read here. Notable detail: “Based on our initial data analysis, one individual was deceased for more than two years prior to the application submission date.”
Look at the bright side. Tim Walz isn’t going to let Minnesota’s hardworking frontline zombies go unrewarded.
“Didn’t follow procedures for avoiding conflicts of interest.” The same pattern is evident in the Minnesota state government’s handing out of grants for arts and behavioral health:
Minnesota Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Division did not comply with certain grants management policies, matching similar findings of a 2021 audit.
The audit, released Thursday, found the agency didn’t follow procedures for avoiding conflicts of interest and gauging whether nonprofits were financially stable enough before awarding grants. . . .
The audit found the DHS Behavioral Health Division failed to complete financial assessments for more than 40 percent of grants reviewed. The grants ranged from $49,000 to nearly $1 million, and totaled $11.5 million. A 2021 audit had a similar finding.
Wait, there’s more.
State agencies have not resolved inaccurate retroactive payments for 30 percent of employees tested by the Office of the Legislative Auditor. The Minnesota Board of Firefighter Training and Education and the Department of Public Safety didn’t retain documentation for overtime paid during Covid-19 leave and didn’t comply with state policy for using state-issued credit cards or reimbursing employee expenses.
Back in 2019, Minnesota’s Department of Human Services admitted that it paid $29 million over a period of five years for opioid treatments that were never administered. The payments involved federal money that the state agency distributed.
In another oddity, Walz’s text messages mysteriously disappeared despite public-records laws, his appointed state cannabis director was selling products that violated state law, and one of his appointments to the gubernatorial Task Force on Broadband stepped down after allegations of domestic abuse came to light.
Walz is terrible. And we haven’t even gotten to his ideology, which has pushed the state’s policies hard to the left.
It’s not just that he’s a leftist. He’s an incompetent leftist.
Judy Randall of the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor, in June, explained why her office keeps finding these large-scale fraud scandals in state agencies:
“State agencies don’t necessarily approach their work with an oversight and a regulatory mindset,” Randall told the bipartisan commission after presenting the investigation into the Feeding Our Future scandal Thursday. Agencies often speak of working “with” beneficiaries of programs because they have a passion for the benefits that often result. The education department referred to the organizations that received child feeding money as “clients” and “patrons” rather than applicants or grantees.
“Not that that’s wrong, but you can’t just trust everybody,” Randall said of the message the terminology sends. “I wish we could but clearly we can’t.
“We haven’t seen evidence of the skill set that is needed, of not trusting people,” she said.
A few paragraphs up, I described the state government of Minnesota as “a giant pile of money just waiting to be taken, with a sleepy guard in the form of the governor.” What if a whole bunch of people in Minnesota like it that way?
Hey, Remember When Joe Biden Was President?
Since his Covid diagnosis on July 17, President Biden has made on-camera remarks to the American public twice: his eleven-minute address to the country on Wednesday, July 24, and the next day, a brief appearance with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the families of Americans held hostage by Hamas. President Biden had no public events on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.
All together now: “He’s fine.” “He has a cold.” “He’s jet-lagged.” “He’s recovering from Covid.”
Today, the president will travel to Austin to deliver remarks and commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act during a visit to the LBJ Presidential Library. From Austin, Biden will travel to Houston, where he will pay respects to Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who died this month.
Josh Shapiro, the Guy You Can Trust Because Others Don’t Trust Him
A quick point about Friday’s Jolt, in which I wrote of Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, “As governor, he’s supported school vouchers.” More than a few readers pointed to Dominic Pino’s work laying out Shapiro’s flip-flop on school choice. I could note my use of the past tense, but the link in Friday’s newsletter is to a Philadelphia Inquirer article saying that “more than two dozen public education advocacy groups from across the country published a letter Wednesday night urging Vice President Kamala Harris not to select Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate because of his support for private school vouchers.”
In short, voucher opponents don’t trust Shapiro; they won that battle in 2023 but aren’t sure the governor’s really on their side in the war. Remember, none of the veep options for Harris are good — there’s only lesser degrees of bad. A Democratic running mate whom anti-voucher forces regard with suspicion is a better option for conservatives than any running mate who’s a resolute opponent of vouchers.
ADDENDUM: Christine Rosen, in the current issue of the magazine, about the First Lady:
Jill Biden’s conceit would be less noticeable if her behavior didn’t demonstrate an unhealthy sense of entitlement and a notable eagerness throughout her husband’s term in office to supplant him as the public face of his administration. Case in point: a picture she posted to her social-media accounts in June 2021 that showed her looking over paperwork at a desk on Air Force One, with the caption, “Prepping for the G7.” Evidently she thought the public would be delighted to know that an unelected official and community-college teacher would be discussing international affairs with world leaders. Recently, at a White House event celebrating Pride month, official video released on White House social-media accounts featured Jill Biden at the podium, saying, “Looking out at all of you, I see America. I hope that all of you feel that freedom and love on the South Lawn today because your home is here.” Not seen on the South Lawn or in the video that day? The other person who calls the White House home: the president.
Kamala Harris is running to be the third woman president of the United States, after Edith Wilson and Jill Biden.