Civics

He’s talking about the Nick Shirley video that’s brought the Minnesota fraud scandal to a few million new sets of eyeballs:

Nick Shirley’s video (I’ll link it in the comments) has gotten a ton of traffic and is bringing the story of Minnesota’s fraud pandemic to a lot of people for the first time – but Bill Glahn, Liz Collin, Scott Johnson and even some MSM reporters (Lou Raguse, Jay Kolls) have been reporting on the fraud problem, including this very daycare, for literally four years. Shirley’s video is a great contribution, especially in terms of eyeballs on topic (pushing 100 million as I write this) – but the fact that it’s the first coverage you’ve *noticed* about the fraud doesn’t make it the first coverage. Do a little listening. Some of us have been beating the drum on this story literally for years [1].

Now, let’s move on to Mr. Mannarino and his invincibly ignorant post.

“While you clowns collect fat paychecks to audit and oversee the government”

Strap in for some ninth-grade civics.

Who does Mr. Mannarino (or anyone who read what he wrote and went “that makes sense!”) think does the “Auditing” of state government?

The executive branch.

Who runs the executive branch?

Since 2011, the DFL. Completely. 100%. Minnesota Republicans have had zero influence into any part of the work of *the executive branch* – the Attorney General, the Secretary of State and especially the entire bureaucracy that reports to the Governor – since Tim Pawlenty left office about this time 15 years ago. [2]

The GOP has had intermittent power *in the legislature* since then – both chambers for two years, no chambers for four, and divided government the rest of the time.

And this is basic civics; the legislature doesn’t tell the governor how to run the executive branch, other than via the budget and, indirectly, via hearings. The legislature doesn’t have arrest or prosecutorial power. [3].

The DFL controls the Governor’s office, has a one-vote majority in the Senate, and a tied House of Representatives. Which meant nothing got through the legislature without *some* biparatisan support – in the 2025 session. Which is how the GOP shut down the DFL’s budget plans in 2025, and how the GOP managed to set up the Fraud Committee that is doing *everything a legislative body can* to fight fraud – hold hearings and make information public. In 2023 and 2024, the DFL controlled *everything* – governor, the whole legislature and the Supreme Court.

So when uninformed social media pundits like “Joey Mannarino” start yapping about “primarying every Republican in the legislature”, I keep asking: “what, SPECIFICALLY, did the GOP not do, that it was legally allowed to do, and was procedurally *able* to do being out of power in 23-24 and with only the power to say “No” today, that it SHOULD do?”

And the responses I get are usually things like…

“Get TOUGH”. OK. How?

“AUDIT them!” The Legislature doesn’t have that power, and even if it did, the DFL has the votes to block it.

“Walk out!” The DFL tried that. It cost them their budget. Given the tied House and minority in the Senate, it’d likely cost the GOP more.

“Arrest the governor!” The Legislature doesn’t have arrest power, even if the GOP had the majority.

Still waiting on an answer.

“Primarying the MNGOP in the Legislature” will affect fraud about as much as, I dunno, going after Menards’ rebate program. Anyone who tells you otherwise is engagement farming and/or fundraising off the ignorant.

Don’t be “the ignorant”.

[1] I’ve interviewed many of the principals on the fraud story since literally 2022 at the latest: Glahn, Johnson, Collin and others from Alpha, and some local Somalis as well.

[2] By the way – the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education, the two largest parts of the executive branch, are both clogged with fraud, and the Attorney General is at the very least circumstantially tied to the fraud (having been recorded telling a room full of people who donated to his and his son’s re-elections that he’d fight AGAINST the Education Departments attempts to investigate them, a month before the FBI raided them and, eventually put them in prison) – but don’t you DARE suggest Secretary of State Simon and our election system aren’t above it all!

[3] And the governor can’t control how the legislature legislates – which is why Gov. Walz failed at armtwisting the legislature into agreeing to his agenda for a special session on “gun violence”