More Star Tribune Shenanigans

The Minneapolis Star Tribune continues to outdo itself in shredding journalistic ethics and integrity, publishing story after story embellishing Little Timmy Walz’ image and history; flat out lying when necessary, leaving out relevant facts and making him into a hero for our times.  It makes me want to puke, all of us living here know both his real nature and the impact of his policies.  Sunday’s paper was more of the same, including a ludicrous column portraying Walz as a saint and a great leader, based on his experience as a teacher.  I had enough and wrote an email to the columnist, which I doubt she will respond to, since it appears Steve Grove got a call from Walz and is following through on a promise to be sure nothing negative or even neutral is published regarding the Incompetent Blowhard.  Here is the full text of that email, and please note the last paragraph, this I believe is the critical failure of modern media–not understanding the importance of their role in informing the citizenry.

“I understand that the Star Tribune views itself as an adjunct to the Democrat Party and has consistently been an enabler for Tim Walz.  And it appears that the word has been given to everyone writing at the paper to burnish his image as he prefers it to appear.  I found your column to be mildly amusing, in a “weird” kind of way.   I suspect, given what we have seen of his true nature during his term as Governor, that it wouldn’t be too hard to find students and fellow teachers who have less kind things to say about him.  As we have seen in press conferences, interviews and debates, he is thin-skinned, vicious, nasty, mean and given to mocking and ridiculing anyone who disagrees with him or his policies.

And however students felt about him as a teacher, what matters at this point is what his educational policies have been and what the impact of those policies on Minnesota’s students has been.  And here the evidence is clear.  There has been a very large and sustained decline in educational achievement.  Less than half of Minnesota’s high schoolers can read, do math or do science at grade level.  The same problem is present at every grade level.  Astoundingly, Florida and Mississippi have higher high school graduation rates than does Minnesota.  A large number of students have simply dropped out of the system.  This despite massive increases in educational spending, far above either the rate of inflation or economic growth.

The reason for the decline in actual learning is obvious.   Walz chose political indoctrination over learning.  He implemented teacher licensing standards that require adherence to pseudo-Marxist oppression ideology and other far, far left lunacy.  Go read those standards, and look at who the Department of Education hired to help craft them–read the websites for those groups–they are racist–blatantly anti-semitic and anti-white, and you might be interested to see that they treat Asians as “white-adjacent” so part of the oppressor class.  The new ethnic studies standards are more of the same, and even more overtly anti-semitic and anti-white.  Again, go actually read them, read about the outside groups creating the standards and then read the report of the independent reviewers hired by the department.  The reviewers were left-wing, but they said the Minnesota standards were too extreme and overtly ideological.  Their advice was ignored.  This indoctrination is the focus in our schools not education, and it is showing.

Walz’ “leadership” has been on full display as Governor.  Cowering in his mansion during the George Floyd riots, and as we later learned ignoring pleas from Minneapolis and St. Paul for help, equivocating about quashing the violence and then blaming Mayor Frey for the debacle that left people dead and injured, mostly minorities, and that resulted in the loss of businesses and residences, again mostly minority owned or occupied.  A drive down east Lake Street is still revealing about the effect of those riots.

And during the epidemic he panicked, using a ridiculous model created by students in a weekend as justification for the most draconian set of futile measures to suppress spread in the entire country.  I reached out to that team to help them fix the model and get better information on which to base policy, to no avail.  Walz constantly exaggerated the risk and harm, terrorizing many people into avoiding needed health care, while arresting business owners desperate to stay afloat.  He closed schools, with lasting impacts on educational attainment, particularly impacting minorities once more.  He constantly mis-stated statistics; I wrote post after post giving accurate information based on the state’s own data and had several columns published in your paper to that effect.

And then of course there is the National Guard fiasco, and we now know both from the unit commander and the chaplain, that Walz knew several months before he resigned that the unit was being deployed to Iraq, that he for several months said he would be going to Iraq with the unit, and then bailed.  Make of that what you will, but it is clear that a minimum he has misrepresented his service, and it certainly appears he was eager to avoid being in a combat zone.  The chaplain specifically referred to it as a “cowardly” act.  So much for leadership.

I am sure you know what integrity is, particularly journalistic integrity.  It is the courage to seek and recognize the facts, all the facts, accept those facts, and act on them.  The Star Tribune’s coverage of Tim Walz doesn’t come close to that standard, quite the opposite.  So where is your integrity and how do you feel about being part of that?  The fundamental first amendment right in regard to the press isn’t to write and publish whatever you wish; it is to ensure that the public gets the facts, all the facts, plain and unvarnished.”