Tag Archives: Minnesota

Beware The False Narrative

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On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article about the narrative the media (and the Democrats) have put forth about the shooting in Minneapolis on Saturday. The narrative somehow does not acknowledge that resisting arrest when having a gun is a really bad idea.

The article reports:

Few people really know what exactly happened this morning in Minneapolis, and that certainly includes the governor and Mayor of Minneapolis. 

Yet both of them started making statements blaming ICE for the shooting of an armed man who was resisting arrest, and seemed to be encouraging the citizens of Minneapolis to attack ICE because they are part of an “invasion” of the state. 

Enforcing federal law is not an invasion of the state. In this case it is the federal government doing the job the state is supposed to do.

The article notes:

Democrats have already settled on a narrative, which amounts to a claim that ICE and the Border Patrol are not legitimate law enforcement officers, that they are kidnapping children and peaceful American citizens, and that everybody being arrested is a “neighbor” who was just minding their business and making our communities stronger.

…Senate Democrats, who haven’t a clue about conditions in Minneapolis, are attacking ICE as a violent version of the Keystone Cops. They are untrained, incompetent, but also Gestapo agents who are arresting innocent rapists and murderers who are, through adding their diversity, increasing the strength of our community.

…The reality is that the streets are being taken over by Black Bloc rioters who are assaulting federal agents every day, and that death threats against ICE agents are a fact of life here in Minneapolis. Random people are being stopped in the streets by anti-ICE “protesters” and harassing them.

…Frey and Walz have all the tools to keep the peace, and could, at any time, tone down the temperature and the rhetoric. All they need to do is assist in the peaceful apprehension of known criminals and turn over the criminal illegal aleins in jail.

…But the media and the Democrats think they have a winning issue on their hands, and want to make Trump back down. They have chosen a more violent version of the same strategy used in the shutdown. They hold the power to end the problem, but milk it for political reasons and blame the president for not doing what they, themselves, have the power to do.

When was the last time you saw a Democrat do something good for his country rather than something he thought was good for his party?

If you want peace in your city, elect someone who will uphold the law!

They Must Have Really Little Offices

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On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:

Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Director Dr. Mehmet Oz and Deputy Director for Health and Human Services, Jim O’Neill, just released a stunning video from Minnesota.  They discuss a former linen factory that was transformed into 400 Medicaid businesses that generated almost $380 million in billing to CMS.

It doesn’t make sense.  One industrial building housing almost 400 individual Medicaid businesses that cost taxpayers $380 million in payments for services that are now under investigation.  It is almost guaranteed these complex houses fraudulent fake businesses.  Director Oz dropped the video on his X account.

The video is interesting in that Director Oz notes that while they are walking around filming, they are being watched. I believe the fraud in Minnesota is very well protected by those in power who profit from it.

The article concludes:

“They generated about $380 million of billing that you, the taxpayer, were putting up. That means roughly each business had a million dollars of billing.”  … “It’s an industrial area. There’s no reason that you have a mother bring her child.”

“You can’t imagine getting extra business support. An autistic child probably wouldn’t want to come here. You hear the noise. It’s just not a hospitable place.”

“The question is, how is it possible 400 businesses billing almost $400 million were able to thrive here?!”

“I think it’s because they weren’t looking. They didn’t want to know that this problem was happening here.”

“We’re here to figure out why these folks are being defrauded. Why the people who live in Minnesota aren’t getting access to the care they deserve because it’s been stolen.”

This is a disgrace. It’s time to discontinue all federal funds to Minnesota until a complete audit of where those funds are going can be completed.

This Is How The System Works

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As the fraud in Minnesota unfolds, one of the questions I have is who wrote the grants, who signed the grants, and who approved the grants. Well, I think we now have a clue as to how all of this was allowed to happen.

On Friday, The Daily Signal reported:

A new report in Minnesota highlights how a former bureaucrat involved in granting a church millions of dollars later went to work as a consultant for the church.

The audit also says that the church failed to provide necessary reporting for hundreds of thousands of dollars of state funding.

Both the church and the former bureaucrat deny any wrongdoing, and gave their side of the story to The Daily Signal.

According to the report, issued by the Office of the Legislative Auditor last week, a grantee—later identified as Zion Baptist Church in North Minneapolis—”could not provide us detailed invoices or program participant data to support a payment of $672,647.78″ from the Department of Human Services’ Bureau of Health Administration “for a single month of work.”

Zion Baptist Church contracted with 14 subcontractors, two of which the legislative auditor visited. The church reportedly paid $40,000 to each of the subcontractors, without specifying rates per service unit.

Those subcontractors failed to show who they served with the money they received. One of them said “the grantee told them they did not need to keep detailed participant records.”

Finally, the grant manager “who approved the $672,647.78 payment left DHS a few days after approving it and later started to provide consulting services to the grantee,” the report stated.

The article notes:

Department of Human Services staff raised serious concerns about subcontractors during the grant period, but supervisors directed them “not to pursue further questioning,” and approved a grant extension.

The whistleblower said key questions remain, such as the justification for avoiding a competitive process for the grant, whether DHS performed due diligence on the subcontractors, whether subcontractors were for-profit entities, and why staff concerns were not pursued.

The whistleblower also listed four grants that Zion Baptist Church received, two of which were sole source (without competition) and together totaled more than $3 million.

“Is Zion some great place?” the whistleblower asked, noting the multi-million-dollar sole-source grants. One one contract of more than $1.4 million, the church “did just a bad job performance” and the state “cancelled it early.”

This smells more than a little fishy to me!

Stopping Corruption At Its Root

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On Thursday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article that provides one example of how the fraud in Minnesota got started and is continuing.

The article reports:

Another Minnesota money pipeline just got shut down, and this one leads straight back to Rep. Ilhan Omar.

The funding, which was tucked into a federal spending bill, was purportedly destined for a “substance abuse clinic” in Omar’s home state of Minnesota.

However, a shocking investigation led by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) revealed that the “clinic” was anything but legitimate.

During an interview on Fox Business, Senator Ernst detailed the absolute absurdity of the proposal, describing a trail of red flags that would make any honest taxpayer’s blood boil.

“What I uncovered the other day, in one of our spending bills making its way through Congress, was a $1 million earmark from Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

“This earmark was supposedly going to a substance abuse clinic, which actually happened to be housed in a restaurant and run by three individuals who share the same residential address, according to their IRS paperwork. Tons of red flags.

“So this is what we saw with the fraud involving the daycare centers. Now we see other earmarks coming directly from members of Congress where it seems fraud is being perpetrated as well.

It’s very easy to tuck earmarks into thousand-page bills that no one has time to read. It’s time that Congress passed bills that were less than five pages long and were limited to one topic.

The article notes:

As scrutiny intensified over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s role in directing taxpayer funds to questionable Minnesota entities, attention also focused on her family’s abrupt and dramatic rise in wealth.

According to a bombshell report from the New York Post, Rose Lake Capital, founded by Mynett in 2022, scrubbed the details of nine key figures between September and October 2025.

The list included high-profile Democrats like former Obama Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli, ex-Senator and Obama Ambassador to China Max Baucus, DNC Finance Chair associate Alex Hoffman, former DNC treasurer William Derrough, and Keith Mestrich, the ex-CEO of Amalgamated Bank, which he once called “the institutional bank of the Democratic Party.”

None of these individuals has been charged with any fraud. However, the timing coincides with federal prosecutors announcing charges against eight more suspects in the massive Minnesota welfare scam, six of whom are of Somali descent.

Omar, a prominent member of the far-left “Squad,” entered Congress in 2019 with a net worth between negative $25,000 and negative $65,000, burdened by student loans and car debt with no assets to her name.

Ilhan Omar will continue to be elected because of the voter fraud in her district. I think it is time that the Justice Department spent some time with her.

A Well Informed Citizenry…

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Thomas Jefferson said, “A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.” (source here)

I am not sure we are currently meeting that criteria.

One of the major stories that finally got national attention this week was the rampant fraud in the Somali community in Minnesota. This is not a new story. The story finally went national due to a video posted on YouTube by Nick Shirley. How many other states that we have not heard about are also guilty of medicaid fraud or other fraud in government programs? I haven’t heard any real outrage from the major media.

In an article posted at Hot Air on Monday, Duane Patterson states:

Now I know what you’re saying. Media isn’t covering this new scandal. In fact, the Star-Tribune and Pioneer Press, the two papers of the Twin Cities, haven’t spent so much as a column inch on the story. The glorious thing about 2025, and a trend that shows it will accelerate going into 2026, is that people are not getting their news from old leftist media anymore. That 42-minute Nick Shirley video I showed you earlier? 90 million views in two days. 90 million! Not bad for a 23-year-old kid doing the unthinkable – reporting and journalism. 

Alphabet networks and Minnesota local stations will continue to ignore the story into oblivion, like they did with Powerline’s Medicaid fraud scandal. But the truth has this funny way of getting out. As white hot as the internet is with Nick Shirley’s reporting, Fox News jumped in over the weekend, and by the time they interviewed him about the Somali daycare scandal, another 10 million had seen his video on YouTube. 

What is happening in Minnesota is not an isolated incident. At what point will American voters become so disgusted with fraud that they will ‘throw the current bums out’ and elect a new set of bums?

How many college students who supported “Palestine” in campus protests actually knew what happened on October 7th or how the hostages taken were treated? How many young female American college students understand that rape was part of that day and part of the treatment of the hostages? Would they still support “Palestine” if they knew? On Monday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article that included the testimony of one of the Hamas hostages from October 7th. Where are the women protesting the idea that rape is a valid part of war?

We will not survive as a republic if people don’t begin to discover their own alternative sources of news rather than relying on the mainstream media.

By The Numbers

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The following chart was posted on Facebook by Dennis Michael Lynch:

This is not acceptable. There is no guarantee that the people receiving these benefits are American citizens despite the fact that American taxpayers are paying for these benefits. Why are we giving money to illegal aliens when we still have homeless Americans?

According to a website called legalclarity.org:

Federal law, primarily the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), makes individuals without a “qualified” immigration status ineligible for most major federal benefit programs. This prohibition means undocumented immigrants cannot access a wide range of federally funded, means-tested assistance intended to support low-income families and individuals.

…The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is accessible regardless of immigration status. WIC provides food assistance, nutrition education, and healthcare referrals to low-income pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women, and to infants and children up to age five at nutritional risk. Eligibility is based on these criteria and income levels, not U.S. citizenship.

I don’t want anyone to starve to death, but I believe American citizens should have priority status. That priority status includes the American taxpayer that is paying for the benefits people who are not here legally are receiving. We cannot support the world even if it chooses to come here.

Another Step Away From The Constitution

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On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article reporting that a Minnesota judge has thrown out a jury’s guilty verdict.

The article reports:

We’ve told you quite a bit about Minnesota’s ongoing fraud problems, the vast majority of them stemming from the large Somali population in and around Minneapolis. The state has paused Medicaid payments over fraud concerns (and that fraud has led to at least one death), and millions of dollars were laundered through the Feeding Our Future program and state housing programs, too. A lot of that money ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab, the largest terrorist group in Somalia.

Despite all the evidence of fraud, a Minnesota judge has just overturned a jury’s guilty verdict in one Medicare fraud case, paving the way for all the other fraud convictions to be overturned as well.

The jury heard that Yusuf and his wife were charged and the jury learned his “home health company” was operated out of a mailbox at an address where multiple other “home health companies” als operated. The state showed they spent tens of thousands of dollars on luxury items.

The jury quickly found the couple guilty. Now, a judge in Hennepin County, Sarah West, has overturned that verdict.

“It’s reversing or overturning a jury’s verdict,” said defense attorney Joe Tamburino. Tamburino was not affiliated with Yusuf’s case but looked at the judge’s decision.

According to Tamburino, Judge West said the state’s cased relied “heavily on circumstantial evidence” and that the state did not “exclude other reasonable, rational inferences.”

“That, in fact, there could’ve been other reasonable theories other than guilt in this case. That’s what it comes down to,” Tamburino said.

Remind me again why we have juries.

There are a number of legal cases working their way through the courts involving Feeding Our Future. The writers at Power Line Blog have followed these cases (some recent examples here and here). The amount of fraud is unbelievable and people need to be held accountable.

Welfare Fraud In Minnesota

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Not every country in the world is interested in ethical behavior. America, even with its flaws, values honesty. Many years ago, my husband and I were talking to a missionary who trained pastors in another country. He talked about the problem of explaining to them that it was wrong to cheat on their exams. In their country, cheating was no big deal. America needs to consider the values of the countries it accepts immigrants from or we will find ourselves dealing with pockets of immigrants who see nothing wrong with cheating. We are dealing with that problem now in Minnesota.

On Wednesday, The City Journal reported:

Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots.

In many cases, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota’s sizeable Somali community. Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

Our investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy, when imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior. The predictable result is graft, with taxpayers left to foot the bill.

The article continues:

If you were to design a welfare program to facilitate fraud, it would probably look a lot like Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program. The HSS program, the first of its kind in the country, was launched with a noble goal: to help seniors, addicts, the disabled, and the mentally ill secure housing. It was designed with “low barriers to entry” and “minimal requirements for reimbursement.” Nonetheless, before the program went live in 2020, officials pegged its annual estimated price tag at $2.6 million.

Costs quickly spiraled out of control. In 2021, the program paid out more than $21 million in claims. In the following years, annual costs shot up to $42 million, then $74 million, then $104 million. During the first six months of 2025, payouts totaled $61 million.

On August 1, Minnesota’s Department of Human Services moved to scrap the HSS program, noting that payment to 77 housing-stabilization providers had been terminated this year due to “credible allegations of fraud.” Joe Thompson, then the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, went even further, stating that the “vast majority” of the HSS program was fraudulent.

The article concludes:

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging it. By extension, that means recognizing the problem’s true source. So far, Minnesota’s governing class and its media establishment have failed to take that basic step. Minnesotans will have to confront the uncomfortable but unavoidable reality: members of the Somali community have played a central role in the massive fraud now engulfing the North Star State.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. There is no reason that American taxpayers should be funding terrorism!

Lady Justice Just Took Her Blindfold Off

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On Monday, KMSP Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul posted an article about some recent vandalism of a number of Tesla cars. The Trump administration has filed federal charges against some of the people who have vandalized Tesla cars. It will be interesting to see what happens on this particular case.

The article reports:

The Brief

    • The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office says it will not seek criminal charges against a 33-year-old Minneapolis man accused of damaging at least six Tesla vehicles, causing thousands of dollars in damage.
    • Minneapolis police say Dylan Adams was arrested last week. Rather than criminal consequences, Mary Moriarty’s office will seek “diversion.”
    • Adams is a state employee, a data analyst for the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

I think the statement by Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara sums up my feelings on the subject:

“The Minneapolis Police Department did its job. It identified and investigated a crime trend, identified, and arrested a suspect, and presented a case file to the Hennepin County Attorney Office for consideration of charges. This case impacted at least six different victims and totaled over $20,000 in damages. Any frustration related to the charging decision of the Hennepin County Attorney should be directed solely at her office. Our investigators are always frustrated when the cases they poured their hearts into are declined. In my experience, the victims in these cases often feel the same.”

When crimes are not prosecuted, they continue. We need to consider the attacks on Tesla dealerships and cars hate crimes and prosecute them as such. If this attack had been at a Planned Parenthood facility or the cars of the employees there, I suspect the City Attorney would have handled it very differently. Unfortunately there is no guarantee of fairness on the part of any local county attorney.

We Need A Victory Too Big To Steal

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There will be (and already has been) cheating by the Democrats in the 2024 presidential election. The cheating is taking a few different forms.

On Thursday, The Gateway Pundit reported:

Ballots found in an Orange County, Florida storm drain were stolen from mailboxes with a USPS master key.

Fox 35 Orlando reported that the ballots were taken from mailboxes by an unidentified suspect using an arrow key, also known as a master key, that was stolen from the United States Postal Service.

Orange County Supervisor of Elections Glen Gilzean shared, “Recently, Orange County voters and the United States Postal Service made our office aware that a stolen USPS Arrow Key was used to access cluster mailboxes in the county.”

“During the theft, several vote-by-mail ballots our office mailed days earlier to voters were discarded on the ground,” added Gilzean.

…The USPS said, “The U.S. Postal Inspection Service cannot confirm, deny, or otherwise comment on the existence of ongoing investigations.”

As The Gateway Pundit reported last week, a resident of Sierra Madre, California, also discovered nearly a dozen ballots in a storm drain while doing yard work.

Last week, Jay Senese of Sierra Madre, California, discovered nearly a dozen ballots and a handful of junk mail in a storm drain near his residence.

On Thursday, The Gateway Pundit reported:

Footage has emerged showing a disturbing trend of non-citizens being registered to vote in Minnesota.

The footage, obtained by Anthony Rubin, CEO of Muckraker, exposes the ease with which non-citizens are being swept into the state’s voter rolls, thanks in part to Governor Tim Walz’s policies that are undermining the integrity of Minnesota’s elections.

In the video published by Oversight Project, 31% of those interviewed at a single apartment complex admitted to being non-citizens who are nonetheless registered to vote.

This comes on the heels of two controversial laws passed by the Minnesota state legislature under Walz’s leadership.

The first, the Driver’s License for All bill, allows non-citizens—regardless of immigration status—to obtain driver’s licenses.

…The second, the Democracy for the People Act, automatically registers individuals to vote through the state’s Driver and Vehicle Services, raising serious concerns about the potential for non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to be mistakenly or even intentionally added to the voter rolls.

Please follow the links above to read both stories. There is cheating going on, and every Trump supporter needs to vote to overcome the cheating.

Clarification On Some Debate Points

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Late Tuesday, MPR News posted an article to clarify some of what was said in Tuesday’s Vice-Presidential debate about Minnesota’s abortion law.

The article reports:

While they are allowed, abortions late in pregnancy are exceptionally rare. According to Minnesota data, in the last five years for which data is available just seven induced abortions have been reported in the third trimester of pregnancy. Abortions later in pregnancy are generally sought due to serious or fatal fetal anomalies, risk to maternal health or life or barriers that delay abortion access such as policy or financial need. It is illegal to kill a baby after birth as former President Donald Trump claimed in the presidential debate in September.

The 2023 law also dropped some state reporting requirements for abortion providers and ended the so-called “Born Alive Infants Protection Act.” Doctors and patients who’d pressed for the law change said the new law doesn’t prevent providers from trying to save the life of a child. Instead, they said it would let them bypass previously required medical interventions in situations where parents want to bond with their infant born with a fetal anomaly that is typically fatal.

These are basically wiggle words. As reported, the Minnesota law does allow abortion in the third trimester. The law also does not require providers to try to save a baby’s life. So Tim Walz did sign one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country.

There were other moments during the debate where the moderators made comments that were misleading or outright lies. One has to do with the fact that the moderators stated that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were here legally. That statement is technically true, but very misleading.

As The New York Post reported, Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance provided some details:

Sen. JD Vance was accurately describing the migrant crisis fueled by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden when CBS moderator Margaret Brennan decided to insert herself with a “fact check.”

“Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status,” she said smugly.

Vance was rightly annoyed by the interruption and said, “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check, and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

He then proceeded to truthfully, forcefully explain what “legal status” means:

“So there’s an application called the CBP One app, where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”

At which point CBS decided to CUT OFF HIS MIC.

This was the most shameful moment in a long history of shameful moments by moderators biased against Republicans. They “fact-checked” the truth, then stopped the politician from responding.

Well played, sir. well played.

Something The Moderators Overlooked

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During Tuesday’s Presidential debate, the moderators were very quick to fact-check President Trump and did not seem to fact-check Vice-President Harris. One area where the moderators fact-checked President Trump was in the area of late-term abortions and the babies that survived those abortion attempts.

On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about that issue.

The article reports:

One of the ABC News debate moderators on Tuesday fact-checked former President Donald Trump on babies who survive botched abortions, saying that they aren’t killed. But Minnesota records show eight babies in recent years have in fact survived botched procedures but then died after being denied life-saving care.

Trump said that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’s “vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth — it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born is okay, and that’s not okay with me.”

ABC News’ Linsey Davis pushed back on Trump’s statement, saying, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

However, in Walz’s state and on his watch, five infants were “born alive” in 2021 during failed abortions, and none was provided life-saving care though two got “comfort care,” the Minnesota Department of Health reported on July 1, 2022.

The article concludes:

Minnesota was the rare state to require such born-alive abortions to be publicly reported, creating a powerful statistic for pro-life and anti-abortion forces to draw upon.

But in 2023, Walz worked with his new Democrat-controlled Legislature to eliminate both the reporting requirement and the state’s legal obligation for doctors, nurses and medical professionals to administer life-saving care to infants born alive during an abortion procedure.

That is barbaric.

 

When Green Energy Isn’t Green

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On Friday, The Minnesota Star Tribune posted an article highlighting one of the problems with wind energy–turbine blades are not biodegradable, and they are big!

The article reports:

GRAND MEADOW, MINN. – Darcy Richardson had big plans for a garden patio enveloped by flowers in her backyard in this little community south of Rochester.

She gave up once the blades arrived.

Trucks dropped off more than 100 fiberglass turbine blades on the empty lot next door in 2020, haphazardly stacked to the edge of Richardson’s property. Almost four years later, the mountain of old wind parts — which is visible on Google Earth — is still there.

Some blades are cracked and stained. Locals say they draw feral cats and foxes and are a safety risk because kids climb on the junk.

They’re also ugly, ruining Richardson’s view, hurting property values and attracting the curiosity of seemingly everyone who drives the highway into town.

“After six months we were like ‘C’mon guys, what’s going on,’” said Richardson, once a master gardener. “After a year we were like ‘Seriously, this sucks.’”

What happened in Grand Meadow is more than merely a local mess. It reflects tensions over the boom of wind energy in southern Minnesota during a shift away from fossil fuels, the problem of recycling green infrastructure, small town political infighting and government and corporate bureaucracy.

The article concludes:

Grand Meadow is looking into whether it can fine TMT. The city asked for help from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, with no luck. Christian is now trying the PUC, where utility regulators plan to weigh in next month after taking public comments on whether the board can or should intervene.

Xcel Energy now owns the wind farm, but the company says it can’t move the blades because it doesn’t own them and described the situation as “isolated.” Xcel is still sensitive to the issue because the blade junk is not exactly building goodwill in a wind-rich area.

Annette Olson co-owns Olson Tree Services, a business adjacent to the blade pile, and said, like several others, she is not opposed to renewable power. But “it’s frustrating when they talk about all the things we need to do to help our environment, but yet they fail to do their part,” she said.

Xcel spokesman Theo Keith said the company is open to including new protections in blade recycling contracts to protect host communities. NextEra declined to comment. Siemens Gamesa said it has a confidential agreement with RiverCap to remove the blades from Grand Meadow.

Donahue, at Canvus, said their lease expires by the end of the year so the blades will be moved soon. But the Richardson family living next to the junk pile, and others, are skeptical.

Darcy Richardson said she sometimes tries to imagine the wind blades as snow piles. The family said they once would have hosted a wedding in the yard, but not anymore. She has a smaller deck close to her house with a small statue of a farmhouse windmill amid black-eyed Susans. It’s the more idyllic vision of renewable energy.

Richardson asked the PUC to consider “what would you do if it was in your backyard?”

Jim had another message: “Don’t mess with my wife’s flowers.”

There are a lot of people who make large political donations making a lot of money from ‘green energy.’ Meanwhile, there are a lot or ordinary people being negatively impacted by promoting ‘green energy’ solutions that have not been completely thought out.

Not Surprising

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On Friday, PJ Media posted an article about the misuse of Covid funds by the state of Minnesota. Minnesota was not the only state to misuse those funds, but since their Governor is running for Vice-President, it is interesting to see what he did with the money.

The article reports:

Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) spent money using pandemic relief funds that could have easily come from the state’s general budget. It’s not a crime. But don’t you think it gives us an idea of what kind of a politician he is?

Reason.com:

A few of the biggest line items should also get more scrutiny, though there is limited information available on the Treasury’s site. For example, the state distributed more than $11 million to the Minnesota Zoo and nearly $3.8 million to the Science Museum of Minnesota to cover operating and maintenance costs. In some ways, that is connected to the pandemic: Fear of the disease and government social distancing mandates certainly harmed museums and zoos. The same could be said of the $237,000 line item for a “movie theater relief grant program.”

But Walz should be asked why he believes federal taxpayers—who may not live in Minnesota or ever visit the state—should be on the hook to pay for that.

As Reason has reported over the past few years, the federal bailout of state and local governments after the pandemic was largely unnecessary, and many governments have struggled to find ways to use the $350 billion in free cash distributed by the ARP. A good chunk of the funds have been put to questionable use, including subsidizing money-losing, government-owned golf courses, padding the paychecks of public employees, and funding tourism promotion campaigns.

The article concludes:

Until someone — not Congress — begins investigating this massive misuse of government power and taxpayer money, we’re in danger of having history repeat itself when the next national health emergency is upon us.

We need someone in Washington who has some respect for the taxpayers’ pocketbooks!

A Vote For President Trump Is A Vote For Parents’ Rights

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An American Vice-President doesn’t have a lot of power, but it is assumed that the President and Vice-President are in agreement over basic issues. If that is the case, it would be a good idea for all Americans to look carefully at Governor Walz and the ideas he has espoused during his time as Governor. On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article spotlighting one policy he endorsed during his governorship.

The article reports:

Gov. Tim Walz signed a law that strips parental protections from out-of-state teenagers and children who claim to want irreversible transgender medical treatment in Minnesota.

He also signed laws that install tampon-dispensing machines in K-12 schools to broadcast the state’s claim that teenage girls can choose their legal sex, and also a law that allows pedophilia to be someday legally protected under existing state anti-discrimination laws.

President Donald Trump’s campaign is eagerly spotlighting Walz’s pro-transgender advocacy, and is describing him as “#TamponTim.”

“As a woman, I think there is no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender-transition surgeries for young minors, who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Tuesday. “Those are radical policies that Tim Walz supports.”

“Kamala Harris’s selection … of Tim Walz as her running mate sends a clear message to America: the Democrat Party is all in on its far-left cultural agenda,” said a statement from the American Principles Project. The project has promised to spend $18 million during the 2024 election to spotlight the Democrats’s pro-transgender priorities.

The article also notes:

“Walz has relentlessly attacked families and pushed gender insanity,” said the APP statement “He has thrown his support behind efforts to eviscerate parental rights, inject gender ideology and other far-left ideas into schools, and open up girls’ sports and private spaces to males.”

Boys in girls sports will destroy scholarship opportunities for high school girls. It will eventually end women’s sports. Where are the feminists who claim to support women? Tim Walz is bad news for women, for parents, and for families.

Kamala Harris Has Selected Tim Walz For Her Vice-President Running Mate

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On Tuesday, Breitbart introduced us to Tim Walz.

Here are some basic facts the article reports about the Minnesota Governor who has been Governor since 2019:

Below are seven things to know about Waltz’s record:

    1. A June report from Minnesota’s legislative auditor found that Walz’s administration “failed miserably in its duty to properly oversee millions of federal dollars it administered to nonprofits to feed children.” The report said that Walz’s alleged incompetence “created opportunities for fraud.” Axios reported: “The report highlighted several ways in which the Walz administration failed to rein in the fraud, undercutting the governor’s longstanding claims that his agency staff deserve credit, not criticism, for their efforts to catch and stop it.”
    2. Walz signed legislation to allow minors to get sex-change operations in Minnesota. He signed a bill to require schools to stock period products in boys’ bathrooms.
    3. Walz allegedly failed to anticipate and react to riots in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd. Even the liberal mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, slammed Walz’s response to the riots.
    4. Under Walz’s leadership, Minnesota gives free college tuition to illegal immigrants.
    5.  Walz signed a bill into law that will give driver’s licenses to potentially 77,000 eligible illegal aliens.
    6. Walz openly championed socialism last week during a “White Dudes” for Harris event.
    7. Waltz was also a radical member of the House of Representatives, with Heritage Action giving him a lifetime score of 13 percent

Honorable mentions:

    • Authorities arrested Walz for DUI.
    • Walz said it was “ageism for Americans to be concerned about Biden’s fitness for office.

Walz is considered to be politically somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders.

On Tuesday, Steve Hayward of Power Line Blog posted:

First, the fact that a choice of running mate did not leak out prior to the announcement this morning likely means Harris didn’t make up her mind until yesterday. She’s indecisive.

Second, the Walz pick suggests the progressive anti-Semitic left successfully intimidated Harris out of picking Josh Shapiro. So she’s weak, too.

A confident Democratic nominee would have picked Shapiro. He could have helped Harris nail down the all-important state of Pennsylvania, and represented for Harris a “Sister Souljah” moment of repudiation to the progressive left that the newly “centrist” Harris badly needs. Shapiro, and perhaps Mark Kelly, would have been a move to add the veneer of ideological diversity (heh) to the ticket, like Michael Dukakis’s pick of Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, JFK picking LBJ in 1960, or Al Gore selecting Joe Lieberman in 2000. Instead she has doubled down on progressivism.

As Scott’s analysis reveals, Walz’s record is almost as target rich as Harris’s. Cue the Trump campaign ads displaying “Kamala’s San Francisco” and “Tim’s Minneapolis” from the summer of 2020. (By the way, will Trump’s nickname be “Tiny Tim”?) The only pick from the field that would have been better from a Republican point of view was Pete Buttigieg. The ghost of Lee Atwater smiles.

The election is going to need a LOT of popcorn.

When Sustainable Energy Isn’t Sustainable

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On January 20th. a website at Substack called Energy Bad Boys posted an article about the Nobles wind farm in Minnesota.

The article reports:

In 2007, Minnesota began its quest to power the state with wind turbines and solar panels when the Next Generation Energy Act (NGEA) was signed into law. This legislation mandated that 25 percent of the state’s electricity come from “renewable” energy sources by 2025.

These mandates, along with generous federal tax subsidies and monopoly utilities seeking to maximize their government-approved profits by building new infrastructure, led to a building boom in wind turbines and solar panels.

From 2007 through 2022, Minnesota built thousands of wind turbines totaling 3,690 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity and 1,143 MW of solar capacity en route to meeting the mandates in 2020, five years ahead of schedule.

However, many of the turbines built to comply with the 25 percent mandate are already being refurbished or “repowered” long before the end of their supposed 25-year useful lives. In fact, one of these wind facilities, the Nobles wind farm, has already been repowered after just 12 years in service.

But why was Nobles refurbished more than a decade before the end of its useful life at a cost of $240 million? The official reason provided by Xcel Energy for repowering Nobles was to spur economic activity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and extend the retirement date of the facility from the year 2035 to 2045.

This story makes for a good newspaper headline, but the data tell a very different story. Digging deeper into the reasons surrounding Xcel’s decision to repower the Nobles facility illustrates how our state and federal energy policies are causing America’s energy decisions to grow increasingly irrational.

The article also notes:

Currently, there aren’t enough transmission lines to move the power generated from these wind facilities to other areas of the 15-state regional grid that could use it. This is because the existing transmission lines can only transport so much power at a time, similar to how water flowing down a sink is governed by the width of the drainpipe. As a result, the oversupply of electricity frequently causes power prices to go negative, which sends a signal to wind turbine operators to scale back supply, at least it works that way in theory.

In reality, the PTC pays wind projects $26 for each MWh of electricity the facility produces, whether or not that electricity is needed. The subsidies mean that electricity generated from wind farms could potentially be sold into the market at a price of negative $25 per MWh and still turn a profit for their owners. This is why the areas with the most wind turbines see the most negative prices, which you can see in the map below.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is only one of many illustrations of the fact that the government is subsidizing the quest for a perpetual motion machine that will never exist.

 

In America It Can Be Dangerous To Be A Conservative

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On Thursday, The Daily Caller reported that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is investigating an arson attack on a building in Minnesota that houses a number of politically conservative groups.

One of the offices in that building was the office of John Hinderaker who writes Power Line Blog. In an article posted Thursday, John Hinderaker talks about the fire bombing.

The article at Power Line Blog reports:

I wasn’t entirely forthcoming in this post about why I haven’t written much the last few days. It is true that I have been in Washington, mostly to attend the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn trial. I will write up my thoughts on the trial (or at least, those portions I have seen) when I have time.

But something else has been distracting me: leftists firebombed my office last Saturday night. At around 2 am, they broke into the building that houses Center of the American Experiment and two other conservative organizations with which we often collaborate, along with many other businesses. The arsonists set two fires: one was in the first floor corridor between American Experiment’s office and the space we sublease to Take Charge, Kendall and Sheila Qualls’ organization. A second fire was set on the third floor, immediately outside or perhaps actually inside the office of the Upper Midwest Law Center, on whose board I serve. This photo shows what the corridor outside my office looks like:

The article concludes:

I am working with the FBI to try to identify the perpetrators. As I told them, the list of potential suspects is long, as my organization is active, and unusually effective, across a broad range of issues. I will have more to say about this before long.

To all my conservative friends–Be careful out there.

Failure To Provide Public Safety

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On Monday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

Federal authorities caught a terrorist at the U.S. southern border and released him into the country, where he roamed freely for nearly a year before being arrested in Minnesota just days ago, according to an internal federal memo exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The unnamed individual, who the memo only identifies as a member of the Somali terror group al-Shabaab, was released shortly after being caught illegally crossing the southern border near San Ysidro, California on March 13, 2023, according to the memo, which the DCNF is not publishing in order to protect the identity of a confidential source. The Terrorist Screening Center “deemed him a ‘mismatch’” after running his name through the terror watchlist, according to the memo, which was sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

However, on January 18, 2024, the Terrorist Screening Center “made a redetermination” that the individual was “a confirmed member of al-Shabaab” and was involved in the use, manufacture or transport of explosives or firearms, the memo states. Two days later, ICE nabbed the al-Shabaab member in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The article concludes:

The U.S. government has considered Al-Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization since 2008. The terrorist group operates in Somalia and has also committed attacks in Kenya and Uganda, according to the National Counterterrorism Center.

U.S. forces killed three al-Shabaab terrorists in a self defense air strike on Jan. 21 at the request of the Somali government

Al-Shabaab has carried out bombings, including suicide attacks, and the group has assassinated Somali peace activists, international aid workers, journalists and numerous civil society figures, according to the National Counterterrorism Center. The terror group carried out a 2013 attack on Westgate mall in Nairobi, killing 67 people, and in 2017 killed hundreds of civilians in Mogadishu through two suicide attacks.

After Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, federal authorities warned Border Patrol to be on alert for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah terrorists attempting to illegally cross the southern border, according to an internal memo exclusively obtained by the DCNF at the time.

“It is clear that our safety is dependent on enforcing our immigration laws and securing the border,” Fabbricatore said.

ICE didn’t respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

It is probably time for every American to take the class to get their concealed carry license. It is becoming very obvious that our government does not have our backs. We need to be responsible for our own safety.

When Citizens Have Good Computer Technology

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On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the use of  Fractal technology to identify anomalies in voter rolls.

The article reports:

For the first time in history, citizens have better computer technology than their government.

Today’s video of Minnesota voter rolls shows, using Fractal technology, that citizens can identify anomalies in government voter rolls that existed for over 100 years – eluding all the obsolete technology Minnesota could bring to bear.

The article includes the following graph:

 

The graph illustrates some of the problems with people on the voting rolls. How many people can live in one boarding house?

The article notes:

Voters living in UPS offices. Voters living in convenience stores. Voters living in an 800 square foot house with 15 other adult voters – which the health regulations would never allow – we show these in video after video.

In 2021, voter integrity teams in 12 states started using Fractal – and as you can see in today’s video – Minnesota – Fractal makes a mockery of the Minnesota voter rolls.

We now have in our grasp, the first example of citizens with far better technology – than their government.

We are embarking on a journey where in state after state, the Fractal team, joined by legislator groups – is showing the dreadful official voter roll pollution – with Fractal technology.

Mr. Secretary of State, you have 2,400 year old voters on your voter roll. Everyone knows it is dirty data or fraud. And when Fractal uncovers it, you lose your credibility if you continue to claim that you do not have dirty data.

If you, Ms. Secretary of State, deliver official records claiming active, registered voters voting from warehouses, convenience stores and vacant lots – you lose your credibility.

You cannot claim there is not fraud in your system – because you are blind to what your voters are discovering with Fractal.

Election integrity is a key issue for 2024.

The article includes the following video:

Minnesota from Omega 4 America on Vimeo.

There are move videos being produced about similar problems in other states.

Please take the time to listen to what has happened to our election process. This needs to be fixed before the next election.

The Court Gets It Right

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On November 10th, The Epoch Times reported that the Minnesota Supreme Court has refused to take a case designed to remove President Trump from the ballot.

The article reports:

The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit that sought to keep former President Donald Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot on Wednesday, after having heard arguments on whether they should take the case.

In a brief opinion and order written by Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, the justices said the petition was dismissed without prejudice.

Free Speech for People, a liberal group, had sued on behalf of eight local voters, arguing that the secretary of state putting President Trump on the ballot would be an “error.”

The article notes the reason the group has tried to remove President Trump from the ballot:

The 14th Amendment grants citizenship and equal rights to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. Ratified after the Civil War, it also included a section that prohibited those who had participated in “rebellions” or “insurrections” against the nation from holding office.

The Minnesota petition argued that, under section three of the 14th Amendment, President Trump is disqualified from holding elected office again because he engaged in an “insurrection.”

There are some problems with this. The most obvious is the fact that generally speaking insurrectionists have guns. The only people who had guns on January 6th were the police, and the only person who was shot that day was an innocent civilian. The second problem with this charge is the speech President Trump gave on that day. In his speech on January 6th, President Trump stated, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Those are not the words of an insurrectionist.

When The Punishment Doesn’t Fit The Crime

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On Friday, Trending Politics posted an article about the sentencing of one of the rioters in the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.

The article reports:

One of the main tenants for a stable and law-abiding society is a judicial system that enforces laws and ensures equal justice for all.

The reverse is true in progressive cities, resulting in an increase in crime.

Various government organizations, even all the way up to the Department of Justice, have gone astray. Social justice warriors are now in positions in the DOJ to implement “racial justice”, which determines how to prosecute cases based on the race and/or social justice cause, not commensurate with the crimes committed.

A perfect example can be seen in a murder committed by a BLM arsonist.

On June 5, 2020, in Minnesota, BLM riots were breaking out and becoming violent. Hundreds of people took to the streets and began looting local businesses, vandalizing private property, and recklessly setting fire to buildings. Montez Terriel Lee Jr. was one of these violent actors.

That night, Lee broke into a pawn shop, poured fire accelerant around, and set it on fire. These actions were caught on video.

Two months later, a 30-year-old man, Oscar Lee Stewart, was found dead among the debris.

The article reports on the sentencing of Mr. Lee:

In another act of injustice, Lee is facing a shorter sentence than normal because, according to US Attorney W. Anders Folk, he was “caught up in the fury” of the Black Lives Matter riots.

…Instead of facing the typical sentence of 200 months, US Attorney W. Anders Folk recommended less time because of the “motives” behind the arson and killing.

The article includes part of a memo written by the U.S. Attorney:

“Mr. Lee’s motive for setting the fire is a foremost issue. Mr. Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement. Mr. Lee, appropriately, acknowledges that he ‘could have demonstrated in a different way,’ but that he was ‘caught up in the fury of the mob after living as a black man watching his peers suffer at the hands of police,’” the memo stated.

I would like to point out that the January 6th political prisoners have been treated very differently (and the damage caused by most of them was minimal).  At some point this sort of injustice is going to create a really ugly backlash against those who are supposed to be upholding law and order.

The Beginning Of An Awakening?

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Many people join organizations hoping that they will fulfill the promise of helping to create a society where opportunities are equal. Sometimes those organizations work toward worthwhile goals, and sometimes those organizations are fronts for goals that are destructive. The title Black Lives Matter is a good one–black lives do matter, just as all lives matter. However, the tenants of the organization do not line up with the title. Unfortunately, there are many black Americans who have not yet realized this, but some black Americans are waking up. The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about one black American who joined Black Lives matter hoping that they would be involved in activities that would help the black community. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

The article reports:

A Black Lives Matter chapter founder in Minnesota has resigned, claiming that the organization isn’t concerned about helping black communities or helping improve the education quality in Minneapolis, according to a video published last week.

Rashard Turner, the founder of a Black Lives Matter chapter in neighboring St. Paul, said he started the branch in 2015 but became disillusioned roughly a year after becoming “an insider” within the left-wing organization, according to a video released by TakeCharge—a group that rejects various provisions promoted by Black Lives Matter, including critical race theory-linked claims that the United States is inherently racist.

“After a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding black families, and they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis,” Turner said in the video.

“That was made clear when they publicly denounced charter schools alongside the teachers union. I was an insider in Black Lives Matter. And I learned the ugly truth. The moratorium on charter schools does not support rebuilding the black family. But it does create barriers to a better education for black children. I resigned from Black Lives Matter after a year and a half. But I didn’t quit working to improve black lives and access to a great education.”

Please follow the link to the article to view the video. I hope that many more Americans will  learn what Rashard Turner has learned.

Pouring Gasoline On A Raging Fire

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Yesterday Fox News reported that the Judge in the trial of Derek Chauvin was not pleased with the recent remarks made by Representative Maxine Waters.

The article reports:

A lawyer defending Derek Chauvin, who is on trial for the death of George Floyd, cited Rep. Maxine Waters’, D-Calif., comments to Minnesota protesters over the weekend in court on Monday.

“And now that we have [a] U.S. representative … threatening acts of violence in relation to this specific case, it’s it’s mind boggling…,” Attorney Eric Nelson said, as he attempted to argue that the jury may have been unduly influenced by external factors.

Judge Peter Cahill said that he wished elected officials would stop referencing the case “especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law” so as to let the judicial process play out as intended.

He added, however, that he did not believe the comments unduly influenced the jury as they had been told not to watch the news.

I hate to be cynical here, but does anyone actually believe that the jury followed the Judge’s orders not to watch the news? The jury in this trial should have been sequestered from the beginning (after the location of the trial was moved). There is no way this could ever be considered a fair trial–jurors know that if they return a not-guilty verdict there will be riots. There will probably be riots anyway, but I believe that the members of the jury fear for their safety if they produce a not-guilty verdict. Whatever the verdict is, it will probably be appealed and the country will go through more strife.

That being said, I have no idea what the correct verdict should be. I wasn’t in the courtroom. I would simply like to see rioters arrested and held in jail for a minimum of thirty days without bail so that they could cool off. That might discourage future riots. Meanwhile, I would like to know what stealing and burning buildings have to do with protesting.

What We Teach Our Children Matters

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the draft publication of the Minnesota social studies standards. The standards are available for public comment. The article cites information found in an article at the Center of the American Experiment website.

The article at Power Line Blog reports:

WORLD/U.S. HISTORY

There are several key pieces of our world and nation’s history that are missing when compared with the 2011 social studies standards.

Missing Benchmarks

* World War I—benchmarks on the social, political and economic causes of the war; nations involved, major political and military figures, key battles; political impact (including formation of the League of Nations)

* World War II—benchmarks on the social, political and economic causes of the war, and main turning points; nations involved, major political and military figures, key battles; timeline of key events leading to WWII

* The Holocaust (including references to the Nazi regime and Jews)

* Rise and effects of communism and socialism; Communist Revolution

* American Revolution—benchmarks on timeline of the major events and turning points of the revolution, including the involvement of other nations and the reasons for American victory; identifying historically significant people during the period of the revolution (Examples: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Elizabeth Freeman)

* Civil War—benchmarks on timeline of the key events of the war; causes of the war; major political and military events; main ideas of the debate over slavery and states’ rights and how they resulted in major political compromises and ultimately war
***

I need someone to explain to me how you can teach WWII without teaching about the Holocaust, Nazis, and Jews.

These are just a few examples from the article. Please follow the link to read the entire article. It offers insight as to the reasons our children don’t understand the freedom and heritage they have in America and why many are willing to trade that freedom for the slavery of socialism.