DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Harris Selects Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Running Mate

More like 25 years removed. But still, thank you for reminding me how old and bald I am.

So you have nothing to show they are selling any tennis shoes? How about Kamala bibles? Maybe Kamala steaks or Kamala bottled water? No Kamala University to rip people off? No Kamala charity that was closed down because it was so crooked?

And you're making an issue out of them selling a camo hat?

Owning guns doesn't make you a redneck. I'm the opposite of a redneck and I own guns. I just picked up my new Glock today. Can't wait to hit the range.

If you didn't have the redneck vote Republicans couldn't even win the south. I'm simply stating the obvious.

And if we didn’t have illegals, welfare bums, and gender-confused weirdo’s, there wouldn’t be a Democratic Party.

Illegals can’t vote. Period.
The southern (red) states use far more welfare benefits than what they pay into.
Facts are facts.

You just keep telling lies like your orange God. Illegals can't vote. There are so many poor people on welfare in those terrific red states that you talk about, they get more money back federal assistance than they pay towards federal taxes. You want to see which states are so poor?


List Of the US States With the Highest Poverty Rates

Mississippi (19.58%)
West Virginia (17.10%)
Arkansas (16.08%)
New Mexico (18.55%)
Louisiana (18.65%)
Kentucky (16.61%)
Alabama (15.98%)
Oklahoma (15.27%)
South Carolina (14.68%)
Tennessee (14.62%)
North Carolina (13.98%)
Georgia (14.28%)

https://bestdiplomats.org/poorest-states-in-america/

Get back to me when the truth sinks in.

Yes, Tump wouldn’t want to upset his base in Appalachia just like Kamala wouldn’t want to ruffle feathers in Cali. And at this point, I’m sorry but nothing constructive is happening here. Just a bunch of us taking shots at each other and ticking each other off. It’s clear that we’re all set in our ways and not going to change each other’s minds. Fun can be pointless, but anger shouldn’t be. And this really isn’t fun.

Just saw Pitt’s post above. Poverty doesn’t equal welfare and illegals. It can be attributed to people who work but don’t earn enough dough. - A hallmark of Trump’s reforms. Ship out the illegals, disincentive welfare, and put Americans back to work. - That’s how it needs to be done.

You are taking shots and I am reporting factual information. Those the not the same things. I gave you the poverty rates of each of the top 10 states. You in return gave back, "Yeah but that doesn't mean".

So are you then saying in those states the wages are so low that their employees must be eligible for federal benefits even when they are working far more than in other states? If so, how is that a good thing? Because as you can see it's almost exclusively red states that are in that top 10. You do realize it's only those living below the poverty level that qualify for those benefits, right?

Or it could have to do with their education systems...........

40 Indiana 43.32 41 11
41 Texas 40.50 42 22
42 New Mexico 37.12 39 50
43 Kentucky 36.06 45 32
44 Nevada 35.67 46 21
45 Alabama 35.62 44 36
46 Oklahoma 34.93 43 46
47 Arkansas 31.03 47 33
48 Louisiana 28.84 48 39
49 Mississippi 25.72 49 47
50 West Virginia 24.82 50 44

https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-educated-states/31075

I appreciate your diligence and don’t want to come off as elevating myself here… but... 19% of Mississippi’s population is below the poverty line. 2.94 million people live in Mississippi so that’s about 580,000.

5 million people in California alone were under the poverty line last year.

Let that sink in. Of the red states you mentioned, you could add up the number of people below the poverty line and it’s still less in total than blue California.

Pitt, Respond to my post above and then I’ll address your post on education. Thx.

Also note that between 2021 and 2022 the number of people in poverty in New York State grew from 1.5 million to to 2 million. So in Cali and NY alone that’s 7 million people. More than those red states you mentioned combined.

It's pretty simple really. California has a population of 39.1 million people. That's why per capita tells the actual story. That's why percentages matter. Why don't you compare the percentage of people under the poverty level in both states? Because reality is not your friend.

For some reason you keep trying to dodge the fact that you have claimed how wonderful red states are. Yet by poverty rates and in education they seem to be some of the worse states in the nation. Poverty and a poor education go hand in hand my friend. It is what it is man. I'm sorry you refuse to accept it. Making excuses for it and trying to compare a blue state with a much larger population is a weak excuse.

The California poverty rate is six percent less that of Mississippi.

https://www.ppic.org/publication/poverty-in-california/

I know for some weird reason you don't think that matters.

Jesus dude. So the percentage of people in poverty of each state doesn't matter? You're hilarious!

Oh come on! You gotta do better than that!

Better than showing you that for every 100 people in Mississippi, 6 more of them are in poverty than every 100 people in California? Nah. That's plenty good enough for anyone willing to admit to the facts.

As for education, I’m a former teacher (help kids w/severe disabilities at home now). I’ll say this… I used to teach in a large urban district in NE Ohio. I’d take note of class sizes, kids who applied themselves, kids who had parents that showed up for conferences, turned in homework… For every 25 7th and 8th graders, there was on average 2-3 who were habitual rule breakers. 2-3 kids who showed up late, interrupted class w/negative behavior, received detentions.

Take a 45 minute class session. One kid shows up late - break in instruction for 5 minutes as they open the door, get their supplies ready, Given a class at that size, add on another 5 minutes to get them refocused on the content. Teach for maybe 10 minutes, and it’s either the kid who showed up late or one of their buddies who needs to be the class clown and either starts talking, throws something, or asks a question aimed to get everyone to laugh. - Another 5-10 minutes of instruction gone. This is an everyday occurrence and sometimes it’s even worse. I’ll get to my point in a moment.

After teaching in the city, I went out to the burbs. - A prominent district that was integrating. Ranked 10th in Ohio. The year started off fine but then a trend started, one third grader, and one 5th grader, both new to the district, and both on a daily basis did things to interrupt instruction. At the end of the year, the vice principal said to me “imagine our year without those two kids.” - That was about a decade ago, and that district is now about 130th in state rankings.

My point: There is so much due process in education that protects the unruly kids, that the kids who want to learn are held back. All it takes is 2/25. Parents have taken notice, teachers have taken notice. While private and charter schools may not pay as much as public and operate at a fraction of the cost.. they provide the kids and families who want to do well a far better opportunity than their public counterparts.

I’m not going into education too much, but in my experience, demographics mean nothing when compared to compliance.

Just my opinion here, but: No discipline at home (and I'm not talking spankings, or beatings), no discipline at school. It's the "I can do what I want, and what are you going to do about it?"

Discipline at home? Do your homework. Hey, I'll help. And when you get done, we're going to sit at the table and eat.

No, we don't talk like that.

Put your clothes away.



So, so many things. Discipline doesn't mean spankings or beatings. It means teaching at home.

I feel bad for teachers in many many situations. They can not do in their limited time everything kids need. If a kid isn't getting help at home, they have a much higher chance of not succeeding. Just my observations over the years.

Well stated Arch. In other words, a kid’s demographic information means nothing when compared to the level of support and rewards/consequences that they receive at home. In my experience as a former teacher, the paycheck was great at public schools, as were the hundreds of kids that I supported/educated. However, the private and charter schools are not constrained by the same due process as the public schools. They’re necessary, especially in the urban areas.

That's why percentages are so damn helpful .... Or 'per capita' rates. It gives you a way to accurately compare the ratios of population to things like homicide rates, education and say, poverty ....

This, all of this. I couldn’t believe that quote that the right has remained the same. I’m an independent, not beholden to either side. I had a hell of a time picking between Obama and McCain. I think McCains’s concession speech was one of the best of all time. I can’t envision anyone on the right making that speech anymore. Trump has brought out all the worst in the party. If you can’t win, try to lie and cheat. If that doesn’t work try to overthrow the whole damn thing and have your running mate hung. Again, you’ll never see a speech like that again until they move on from Trump.

This isn’t the same party at all. I haven’t voted for a single person who has aligned themselves with that platform. This isn’t the same Republican Party it’s been for years, very far from it. Hopefully one day it goes back to its roots but currently it is very very broken.

I mean really, did they even vet this guy??


In Minnesota’s $250M fraud scandal, Walz bowed to race-hustling scammers
By James Bovard
Published Aug. 8, 2024, 6:16 p.m. ET

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday heralded Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the running mate who will “unify this country.”

But Walz’s history of turning a blind eye to the plunder of politically favored racketeers suggests he’ll instead bow to Democrats’ special interests.

Last week, Walz sneered that Republicans “don’t know anything about family values. Family values means . . . feeding children.”

But do politicians deserve applause for government food programs that feed no one?

That would be the nation’s largest single piece of COVID fraud, Minnesota’s $250 million “Feeding the Future” scandal.

The Minneapolis nonprofit received millions from the US Department of Agriculture over nearly two years under relaxed pandemic-era rules to quickly bring food to the needy.

But only a small amount was spent as intended, prosecutors said.

The ghost program was outed in a series of Justice Department indictments in late 2022, after Walz and his administration kowtowed to politically connected nonprofit groups while ignoring fraud warnings from local whistleblowers — and never checking on the charity’s inflated numbers and blatantly fake filings.

After the 2020 election, the state’s Somalis — many represented in Congress by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — were labeled “among the country’s most engaged voters” and credited with keeping former President Donald Trump from winning the North Star State.

The Justice Department has charged 72 politically connected Minnesotans with pilfering $250 million from federal child-nutrition programs during the pandemic.

Five have been convicted by a jury, and 18 have pled guilty so far.

And they didn’t just skim some cash off the top.

“Almost none of this money was used to feed children,” FBI agent Travis Wilmer said.

“Instead, the participants in the scheme misappropriated the money and used it to purchase real estate, cars and other luxury items.”

Some of the plundered cash ended up in the coffers of Omar, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other Democratic politicians.

Walz’s appointees at the state Department of Education “created opportunities for fraud” thanks to their totally “inadequate oversight” and ignored “warning signs” about Feeding Our Future even before the pandemic, a Minnesota legislative audit revealed.

Walz’s administration was swindled by a scheme that even a village idiot could have detected.

Tax dollars were pilfered using the names of phony recipients generated by the website listofrandomnames.com.

Children supposedly named “Unique Problem,” “Serious Problem” and “Friday Donations” were listed as clients.

One restaurant claimed to be serving meals to more children than were enrolled in all the city schools in Minneapolis — but Walz’s wizards never bothered to stop by and check the location.

FBI analyst Pauline Roase testified that some conspirators created limited-liability companies “to hide the fact that they were not actually buying food.”

As early as November 2020, state officials recognized trouble and sought to end government funding for Feeding Our Future.

The nonprofit retaliated with a lawsuit claiming that the state government was discriminating against it for working with racial minorities.

Members picketed the Minnesota Department of Education headquarters, waving signs that said “F.O.F. Feeds Our Kids, MDE won’t” — and the scam continued.

Walz “was absolutely afraid of the race card,” according to Bill Glahn, an analyst with the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment.

In July 2021, Walz presented the Outstanding Refugee Award to Ayan Abukar, who was later indicted for bribery, money laundering, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud tied to Feeding Our Future.

His administration largely ignored the scandal until FBI raids in early 2022 made national headlines.

Yet some of the accused continued to feel entitled to legal impunity: In June, during the federal trial of the first batch of defendants, allies attempted to bribe a juror with a Hallmark gift bag stuffed with $120,000 in cash.

Five people have been arrested in the bribery scheme, and one has pled guilty.

But Walz is blameless, at least according to him.

“What I’m angry about and can’t stand is these people are criminals [who] did this,” he said in September 2022, absolving himself of any fault.

After the first guilty verdicts were handed down, Walz denied wrongdoing by any state official: “There’s not a single state employee that was implicated in doing anything that was illegal.”

“We can always do better,” he said, shrugging off the scandal.

But the Feeding Our Future debacle could well be a prototype for a Harris-Walz administration beholden to identity politics — and ready to grant Hunter Biden-style immunity to connected offenders.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/08/opinion/walz-bowed-to-race-hustling-scammers-in-250m-fraud-scandal/

So your connection is that Walz once presented an award to somebody who was later indicted for a crime?

I have some bad news for you about your candidate....

If it were about the connection, you'd have a point. The problem is the Mr. Magoo, "I didn't see anything" act. It seems to be a common problem that accompanies anything political.

Oversight is a primary component of a governor's job.

Ignorance isn't an excuse when it's your job to know.

A whataboutism deflecting to Trump doesn't change that. But, as I said earlier in regards to politics, both sides have their "intentional" blind spots.

So your connection to intellect is to pull one sentence and then play "I know you are but what am i"?



Walz oversaw worst pandemic fraud in nation; $250 million stolen from program to feed kids


By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Thursday, August 8, 2024

Plenty of governors’ states were bilked by pandemic relief fraud, but Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz oversaw the most egregious case.

Roughly $250 million that was intended to pay for meals for hungry children went instead into the pockets of fraudsters, according to federal prosecutors who charged 70 people with operating the massive scheme.

A state audit said the Minnesota Department of Education missed repeated warning signs. The audit doesn’t specifically fault the governor, but Rep. Lisa Demuth, the top Republican in the state House of Representatives, said the problem rests with him.

“One hundred percent of the fraud lands on the shoulders of Gov. Walz,” she said. “We have systemic fraud in the state of Minnesota, and it has not been taken seriously.”

The programs at issue fund free meals at child care and aftercare programs. During the summer, they provide meals for children who get free lunches during the school year.

During pandemic school shutdowns, the second program was tasked with delivering meals to children. Providers, seeing dollar signs, rushed to join the program, and fraud bloomed.

Feeding Our Future is a nonprofit that prosecutors say helped siphon money to fraudsters.

One woman was paid $7 million to serve more than 2 million meals and pleaded guilty. She said she did serve some meals but nowhere near what she had claimed in her reimbursements. She has been ordered to pay back more than $5 million.

At the height of its operations, Feeding Our Future claimed to have doled out 11.8 million meals in April 2021 alone for $32 million. After that, the state became more stingy in approving Feeding Our Future’s claims. It ousted the organization altogether in January 2022 after the FBI executed search warrants.

Minnesota’s legislative audit office said the state Education Department, which ran the program, was out to lunch.

Complaints have been rolling in since 2018, but the state has failed to follow up on many of them. Sometimes, it allows Feeding Our Future to investigate itself. In at least two cases, the department declares Feeding Our Future to be “seriously deficient,” which should have triggered either a major course correction or the termination of the program. Instead, the state “deferred” those consequences.

It’s now an issue for Mr. Walz, the Democratic governor whom Vice President Kamala Harris this week tapped as her presidential running mate.

“The buck’s got to stop somewhere,” said Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota think tank. “The Department of Education is a Cabinet-level agency. He appoints the commissioner and then several layers of bureaucrats below that. It falls to him.”

Mr. Walz’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment. After the June audit, it sought to distance the governor from the scandal.

“Feeding Our Future was an appalling abuse of a program intended to feed kids. But those involved have not escaped accountability — dozens of have been charged, and several are now behind bars,” his office told Minnesota media outlets. “The state has taken strong steps to find and eliminate vulnerabilities in government programs and we are constantly evaluating ways to improve.”

Nobody has been fired in connection with the scandal. When state legislators questioned Willie Jett, who now heads the department but wasn’t there during the fraud, he said he wouldn’t be parceling out blame, Mr. Glahn said.

The Minnesota Department of Education didn’t respond to an inquiry seeking data on how much of the stolen money has been recovered, but a report by WCCO-TV put the figure at about $50 million as of June.

The trouble for Mr. Walz is that Feeding Our Future isn’t a one-off.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/aug/8/tim-walz-oversaw-worst-pandemic-fraud-in-nation-25/

Here's more...

He had frozen the funds early in the obvious scam... until they filed a lawsuit for racism.



When did Gov. Tim Walz know about the Feeding Our Future fraud?

The Walz administration can’t make up its mind.
By: Michelle Griffith - September 30, 2022 11:11 am



Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz found out about suspicious activity in a child food aid program — now the subject of a massive federal law enforcement dragnet — around the time that local nonprofit Feeding Our Future sued the state Department of Education in November 2020, his office told the Reformer Friday.

Republicans have sought to pin blame for the scandal on the first-term DFL governor and Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office represented the state as it sought to stop the fraud. Scott Jensen, Walz’s GOP challenger, earlier this week called for an investigation into Walz’s response to the alleged fraud and released an anti-fraud plan of his own Thursday.

“What did Governor Walz know and when did he learn it?” Jensen said at the press conference. “Who is he trying to protect?”

U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said last week that the individuals indicted in the Feeding Our Future case began their scheme in April 2020, and over time misappropriated $250 million in funds, buying luxury goods, cars and real estate.

In an interview with the Reformer on Thursday, Walz said he was verbally briefed about suspicious activity in the program in late April or early May of 2020 — “very early in the program,” Walz said.

A spokesperson for the governor later told the Reformer that Walz misspoke and he found out when MDE alerted federal authorities. MDE first reached out to officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture with concerns about the nonprofit’s rapid growth in the summer of 2020.

“The governor was aware of issues and concerns related to the program in 2020, when MDE raised those concerns with the federal government and (Feeding Our Future) sued MDE,” the governor’s office said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

The spokesperson then followed up again to clarify that Walz found out after Feeding Our Future filed a lawsuit in November 2020.

MDE administered and oversaw the funds and allocated them to sponsoring agencies like Feeding Our Future, which then in turn paid the money to various meal distributors across the state.

In the fall of 2020, MDE stopped processing new applications for Feeding Our Future, alarmed by the large number of applications and reimbursement claims. The nonprofit in turn sued MDE, alleging racial discrimination.

About four months later, MDE notified Feeding Our Future it had become aware of claims that the nonprofit’s fund allocations weren’t being used to purchase and distribute meals.

MDE said it would stop allocating funds to the nonprofit until they could verify the claims, and Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann called a hearing in April. Guthmann told MDE he thought the agency was not legally allowed to halt payments to Feeding Our Future. However, that issue was outside the purview of the lawsuit, which centered on applications for new sites. After that hearing, MDE resumed payments as it alerted the FBI.

Walz last week attacked Guthmann and incorrectly stated that the judge had issued an order for the state to resume payments. In a rare move, Guthmann issued his own statement and said the governor was incorrect, and that he did not order MDE to resume payments but rather the agency did so of its own accord.

Walz told the Reformer that he disagreed with Guthmann’s decision, but he respects the judge, the judicial branch and the principle of the separation of powers.

Walz and Ellison have also said they were limited in what they could say in the past two years because they didn’t want to interfere with the federal investigation that led to the recent wave of indictments. Without their cooperation, they say, the investigation may not have ever launched.

Walz said in the Reformer interview that he was deeply concerned about food security for children early in the pandemic.

“I was losing sleep in early 2020 about food security for our kids,” Walz said. (🤣)“We were doing such good work — from our schools, to Second Harvest Heartland to the Department of (Agriculture), that it was just mind boggling to me that someone could be stealing money from them.”

Feeding Our Future’s growth exploded thanks to the federal pandemic program: In 2019, the company received $3.4 million from the program; two years later the nonprofit received nearly $198 million, according to the FBI’s January 2022 affidavit.

Walz said once the FBI completes its investigation, the state can create a plan to prevent such fraud from happening again.


https://minnesotareformer.com/2022/...know-about-the-feeding-our-future-fraud/

The Money they were stealing was Federal Money -- and they started doing it while Trump was president.

Also, in one of the very few sentences you didn't bold:

"Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann called a hearing in April. Guthmann told MDE he thought the agency was not legally allowed to halt payments to Feeding Our Future."

So a Judge told the Government that they weren't legally allowed to do something -- and so they stopped doing it.

Now, I know that idea seems foreign to a Trump supporter, but.....

This is Trump's fault??



I somehow had it pegged in my mind that you made coherent posts from time to time. Just another joker with TDS. Thanks for clarifying. 🤣

I guess if that's the best you can do.

No, it's the fault of the people that were stealing money. Walz is no more connected to this than Trump is - that's my point.

You have no point. He was aware of fraud and did nothing. 250 million dollars worth. Thought about it until "racist" was implied, then valued his alliance with woke more than stopping a criminal enterprise stealing tax money. I don't want people like that in charge of a convenient store, let alone a country.

Thanks for playing.

Thanks for playing? That's all you're doing here is playing.

There is no evidence of any of that -- it is alleged in the article you are posting. At best, they say he was briefed about the program. If it was known to be criminal, then why weren't they charged with crimes for 2 more years?

Your attack is "a crime happened in a state where the VP was once governor" -- that's extremely weak.

So is your reading comprehension. And I apologize, I forgot, libs need DNA for their criminals.

So without DNA, all this is a wash...

Was supposed to oversee the program
Knew there was fraud
Cut off payments... until they called it racism
Let the fraud continue
Presented an award to someone he knew was involved in the fraud
LIED about when he knew about it
LIED about what the judge's orders are
Claimed he beared no responsibility when the spotlight hit him
Shrugged off the entire $250 million scandal and thievery of taxpayer money and said “We can always do better”

#noevidence

There is always going to be some hit piece on a political candidate -- if it wasn't this it would be something else...

All and all - this one is extremely weak -- and 90% of it is conjecture, not evidence.

So, the report didn't point fingers, so he did nothing wrong.

Let's look at what actually happened. Not some distorted, one sided view of the facts.

In actuality the money came from the feds and not that state. I'm not even sure if the state had the standing in court to continue such a case since they weren't the ones providing the funds. What did happen is Minnesota turned this over to the feds to pursue and here are the results of that..........

“Without the Attorney General’s involvement alongside MDE in flagging that fraud and turning it over to the criminal investigative power of the federal government, there would likely have been no federal investigation or indictments,” the statement said. “The FBI has praised this cooperation.”

Forty-nine people have been charged in the alleged scheme to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic and steal $250 million from federal programs designed to provide low-income children with nutritious meals. The newest defendant was scheduled to leave the U.S. for Turkey but was arrested Monday by the FBI at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

Many of the defendants are accused of creating companies that falsely claimed to be offering food to tens of thousands of children across Minnesota, then seeking reimbursement for those meals through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nutrition programs, which are administered in Minnesota by the state Department of Education. Prosecutors said the defendants used the money to buy luxury cars, property and jewelry.

Walz said Thursday that the Minnesota Department of Education’s hands were tied by a court order for it to resume food program payments, despite concerns the state had raised. And he said the FBI asked the state to continue the reimbursements while its investigation continued.

Jensen expressed skepticism that the FBI would have instructed the state to continue to make millions of dollars in fraudulent payments, and called on the agency to clarify.

Cyndi Barrington, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, said the bureau does not comment on ongoing investigations.

https://apnews.com/article/2022-mid...olitics-26a3cb54fc0fa3cf591185dfb44149b0

What you have is a judge claiming one thing while the state turned the case over to the federal government who actually supplied the money in the first place. Oh the humanity!

But you’re going to pull the lever for someone CONVICTED of stealing from their charity?
Dear God the hilarity of it all.

I see some posters are jelly of my jag. It's been an awesome car. Classy and fast. Yes it is expensive to maintain, but I can afford it.

But you keep doing you with your old lifted pickup trucks and double wides.

I'll keep laughing.