Minnesota has made national headlines in recent years for all the wrong reasons. We used to be known as the birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, and Prince. Now, we're known as the birthplace of the Defund the Police movement.
First I, then my mother, were widowed 364 days apart under Harris-Walz. Life for us has become increasingly hard because of the failed leadership of these two.
Unfortunately, an accurate picture of life under Harris-Walz requires some math.
"Bidenomics" was repeatedly touted by Vice President Kamala Harris as "working," We two Mnnesota widows have had to deal with Walz' penchant for raising taxes coupled with Biden-Harris' inflationary policies that have made life very expensive, not just for us, but for everyone. Minnesota boasts the 8th largest income tax rate and the highest corporate tax rate in the nation. People are fleeing in droves.
My mom has spent the two winters since dad died rationing her heating oil, which went up by a staggering 99.6 percent between Biden-Harris taking office and my father's death in 2022. She keeps her thermostat in the 50s during cold winter nights. My property taxes are skyrocketing, so my house payment rises. Cost of upkeep rises. The same thing is happening to my mom.
The week after my father died, my 81-year-old mother was back at the job from which she had retired to ask for it back. Now age 83 and a recent cancer survivor, she holds three jobs. She said, "Because of inflation and taxes, it's almost like I didn't go back to [the aformentioned job]. It's a wash financially." Thus the other two jobs.
"But inflation is going down!" people say, while they mean, "prices are going down." They're not. They're up 20 percent because inflation should be added up year over year.* If inflation is down to 3.2 percent from its high of 8.0 in 2022, it doesn't mean prices are going down, it just means they're going up at a lower rate. (We really need to do something about our education system because this shouldn't have to be Dick-and-Janed to anyone.)
Walz has passsed an ungodly amount of tax hikes. He's repeatedly raised taxes (despite a growing surplus) on the middle class while enacting an insanely expensive green agenda. The MN Department of Health and Human Services has been embroiled in an unbelieveable amount of scandal during Walz' tenure, the most recent of which involves $250 million in stolen COVID funds meant to go toward feeding hungry children. No hungry children were fed. Walz has been issued subpoenas by three federal agencies regarding the scandal.
Speaking of scandals, under Tim Walz, our beautiful city, Minneapolis, is so crime-ridden and in many places, desolate, that many people who don't live in it don't want to go there, or do so only if they absoutely have to. Many who live there have lost their businesses or livelihoods forever.
"Crime is down. The numbers prove it!" people will say. But when Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) numbers are calculated correctly, crime is up. Since 2020, the Minnesota BCA numbers show violent crime has gone up by 23.3 percent statewide.** And nobody can claim "crime's going down now," because it dropped by a lesser percentage in 2023 (6.1) than 2022 (8.6), so it's going UP. Tim Walz has overseen all of it.
If you live in a city outside of Minnesota that was burned, looted, destroyed and/or not rebuilt in 2020, you have Tim Walz to blame. He took three days to call in the National Guard during the Floyd riots, and when he was asked to do it he disparaged the guard by saying they were not highly-trained soldiers but were just "19-year-olds who are cooks." Nice words for a man who "proudly served" 24 years in the Army National Guard.
He ordered the police at the 3rd Precinct to "stand down" and flee, to let it burn. I remember watching it and saying to my husband, "this is going to set a precident for the nation." I'm not psychic, just awake. Walz helped launch the Defund the Police movement, a local cancer that metastasized nationally post Floyd and helped increase crime and deflate morale among police everywhere.
This is just a small sample of the joys of living under Harris-Walz. Walz gave us snitch lines meant to pit neighbor against neighbor; he seized and held onto emergency powers with an iron grip, only relinquishing them after the MN Senate wrestled them away after 17 months; he signed more than 100 executive orders during that reign of power; his mandate to send COVID-positive patients to nursing/care homes caused preventable deaths of the elderly and disabled giving MN the highest percentage of COVID deaths at nursing facilities in the country; millions of missing COVID money; rampant scandals; making MN a "sanctuary state for transgender youth" sanctioning state kidnapping of children and stripping away parental rights; our sanctuary state status making us a magnet for illegal migrants after we already took in huge numbers of refugees, straining all of our resources from medical care to schools.
Harris gave us tie-breaking votes in congress that caused high inflation; Bidenomics, which threw the American dream into the dustbin of history; the fastest growing segment of job seekers are retirees; food shelves meant for the hungry struggling to keep up with demand; families becoming homeless due to exploding rent and mortgage rates; expensive gas, electricity, and heating oil; wars breaking out around the world; 350 million missing children; a border open not only to those yearning to breathe free, but to those who seek to destroy us, even if its one woman or child at a time.
Our lives under Harris-Walz could be yours if we don't vote to stop it.
The good news is that America has been in bad shape before and recovered. Minneapolis was dubbed "Murderapolis" in the 90s, but crime had come down significantly by the end of Republican Tim Pawlenty's two terms as governor. The gas lines and exploding interest rates of the Carter years led to the Reagan recovery because people were sick of their plummeting standard of living and voted their way out of it.
We can do this. We too can vote our way out of this. We need to do it. My mom can't work forever, and I will lose the home my husband and I worked so hard for if this doesn't turn around. Our children, grandchilden and great-grandchildren deserve a future that's much better than life is now.
I hear there are about three persuadable people in the country right now. But since my family has lost three Republican men since the last presidential election, I'm hoping to persuade at least three people to vote Republican if they haven't yet, or if they were planning to sit it out, please don't. Hungry children and exhausted widows are depending on you. We could use some joy.
*Using Consumer Price Index numbers, when Trump left office, inflation was at 1.2%. For the years 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 respectively, the equation is: +4.7+8.0+4.1+3.2=20%.
**Violent crime in MN year over year for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 respectively: +17.2+21.6-8.6-6.9=+23.3. When crime shoots up by 38.8% over two years, it's dropping by a collective 15.5% over the next two years isn't a net drop but a significant gain.