The Minnesota Star Tribune is on its way to bankruptcy. The actual physical paper is a shell, with little advertising, once the lifeblood of newspapers. The digital version is in little better shape. The newstand price and the subscription price have been raised significantly, but that just drives away even more readers. The real problem, which you would think the paper’s owner understands, is that it is an undisguised shill for the whacked left-wing Dem party, both locally and nationally. This editorial stance pervades what little actual reporting done by the Strib.
Unfortunately for the Strib, the local state news is almost uniformly negative, due to the mismanagement of the state and its local governments for over 15 years. The reign of Fat Timmy Walz has been particularly destructive. Looking back at about three weeks of stories that relate to Minnesota really solidifies the impression of decay. Here is a sample of what is going on in the once great state of Minnesota and its major metropolitan area of Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Criminals run free, with little constraint by law enforcement. We recently had a spate of several hundred cars in Minneapolis having windows smashed and being broken into, just over a couple of nights. No hope of catching the offenders, since the Minneapolis police force has been gutted and dispirited post-George Floyd nonsense. Car and house insurance rates have skyrocketed in recent years and soon won’t even be available. Light rail crime is high and suppressing ridership on a system that already generates huge losses every year. Another huge meth seizure occurred, as the state welcomes illegal immigrants, facilitating criminal activity. Where is Keith Ellison, the state’s racist attorney general, and what is he doing about the crime spree? Why, he is busy suing Trump, since that gets headlines. On the plus side, Little Timmy let a despicable piece of scum who axe-murdered several people out of jail.
Government waste and fraud is also rampant in Minnesota and equally ignored by Walz and Ellison, since they benefit from it. Federal law enforcement officials unveiled another multi-hundred million dollar scheme to steal from a state program, partly funded by federal money. It would be embarrassing, but Little Timmy acts like nothing is going on and it certainly isn’t his fault. It is no accident that the state legislative Dems blocked an Inspector General position in the last session–they don’t want to interrupt the fraud gravy train that has become an important source of contributions.
Our light rail project is a model of waste–years behind schedule and billions over budget. Over rail and bus projects are in similar disarray, and thank God, the Feds cut off funding for these projects, so the state may have to abandon them. More waste is found in the Incompetent Blowhard charging the state a half a million dollars to prepare his feeble mind for Congressional testimony. This was particularly wasteful since lying and making stuff up is the core of Timmy’s character–why did he need prep to help with this?
State and local government employees continue to whine about having to actually go to work. We have a huge number of these employees who do absolutely nothing but collect a paycheck and give a bunch of it to the Dems. Many are DEI hires, none are monitored or called to account for doing their jobs.
Minnesota might be losing manufacturing jobs, and it is due to tariffs according to the Strib. Nope, has nothing to do with it, it is because this is a terrible state to do business in–high taxes, excessive regulations, poorly educated and motivated workforce, decaying infrastructure, high utility costs–those are the real reasons businesses leave the state or don’t expand here. And there is a lot of, unavoidable even for the Strib, alarm about the number of restaurants and stores closing in the metro area. The reasons are similarly unavoidable, high taxes, high crime, high regulation; which equals low revenue and profits.
Despite federal funding cuts, Minnesota’s climate activitists and determined to continue their so-far successful campaign to drive electricity costs as high as possible and create frequent blackouts. Contrary to Fat Timmy’s lies; as Minnesota has closed coal plants and other good cheap source of electricity and gone to environmentally damaging and unreliable solar and wind, consumers’ bills are soaring. It is crazy, but all those subsidies go to the rich people who donate to Fatso.
Fnally, as I predicted at the time, it turns out that the killer and shooter of local legislative figures is just plain crazy, not some left-wing or right-wing nut. Just another deranged loser who turns to violence. In Minnesota, it is currently easy for people to become deranged.
