Republicans in the Minnesota legislature are making a big deal about adding more layers of auditing and bureaucracy to prevent fraud, as happened here during the Covid pandemic when there were both increased funding and looser rules to feed kids who were not in school. This is called the Feeding Our Future case.
Governor Walz had already called for other types of increased oversight, and there are good (in my opinion) explanations for why things went the way they did during the Covid shutdown, given there were people intent on doing wrong…even though the resulting $250 million in fraudulent payouts is obviously bad. All of those people are now facing trial, have been convicted, or have made plea deals with prison time.
But state Republicans have to make their own hay on the topic... fine, I guess.
It's just galling that it takes place at the same time we have Trump and national Republicans preparing to defraud the federal government or wasting money at every opportunity.
One relatively small example is within the immigrant deportation program. Many people were being deported under Democratic administrations as well, but when they were flown to other countries, it was by chartered airplane. According go a recent episode of the Rachel Maddow Show, a 12-hour flight on one of those planes would cost $100,000.
Which seems like a lot, until you hear that the current Trump administration's policy is to deport people on military cargo planes, which costs — depending on the type of plane used (C-17 or C-130E)— $250,000 or about $800,000 per 12-hour flight.
So that's +$150,000 or +$700,000 per flight... and these are done daily, or (who knows?) multiple times per day.
And why are they using these types of planes?
To look tough by have a photo opp of shackled people entering the maw of a military plane. There's no other reason.
Let's see... if we say there's only one flight a day and they only use the cheaper plane, and we give them a couple of holidays off... 360 x $150,000 = $54 million in one year.
If they do one of each kind of plane for 360 days, that would add another $252 million in one year for the $800,000 plane. That would total to $306 million per year.
Funny! That $252 million to use the larger C-130E is just about the same amount stolen in Minnesota's Feeding Our Future fraud case. Except in the case of the plane, the waste, fraud and abuse comes from the president dictating misuse of government equipment and personnel so he can look tough on immigration.
Meanwhile, Minnesota Republicans are acting like they care about fiscal responsibility. Ha ha ha.
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