Folks, the latest from 5 Investigates lays it bare: Nearly $100 million in state grants under the Minnesota Promise Act—sold as aid for disadvantaged small businesses hit by racial discrimination, civil unrest, or funding barriers—has turned into a giveaway bonanza for questionable recipients. Over 650 winners in the Twin Cities metro alone, including laundromat owners repairing vans after George Floyd fallout. Sounds good until you look closer.
More than 300 “recipients” listed as individuals (sole proprietors, mostly in transportation), many unreachable when investigators called. Phones dead, no answers on how the money was spent. Then the real stinkers: HousingCare Inc. grabbed $33,500 while billing Medicaid nearly $4 million through a fraud-plagued housing program shut down last fall. B&M Vital Homecare snagged almost the max $47,000 after losing its license for serious client health and safety violations—DEED’s excuse? They were “appealing.” Technicalities, right?
Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, the bill’s author, swears there’s “no fraud and no possibility of fraud,” citing his personal site visits. DEED admits they didn’t cross-check other agencies for fraud alerts until a 2025 executive order forced it. The Neighborhood Development Center, handling metro applications, stonewalls questions despite preaching transparency. Pass-through grants mean layers of rubber stamps and zero real accountability. This isn’t oversight failure—it’s design. The DFL syndicate crafts these programs to exploit real pain, promise fake hope, destroy communities, and funnel your tax dollars to connected grifters, nonprofits, and fronts.
We’ve seen this movie: Feeding Our Future’s $250 million fake meal scam, billions looted from Medicaid and autism services, COVID relief theft, daycare fraud rings. Walz’s DHS fabricated records to speed payouts. Now Walz and Ellison face Congress over it. The pattern? Intentional. Racketeering wrapped in compassion. They prey on the vulnerable, twist human suffering into profit, and leave hardworking Minnesotans footing the bill.
But here’s the vision—the real one—for Minnesota under a Parrish administration. We don’t need more rigged “programs,” “incentives,” or slush funds run by insiders. True help means getting the government’s boot off hardworking necks and letting families and small businesses keep what they earn.
Imagine a Minnesota where:
• The endless list of taxes, fees, and mandates designed to extort the working poor vanishes or gets slashed to the bone.
• Corporate franchise tax at 9.8%, plus annual minimum fees starting at hundreds (or thousands) based on property/payroll/sales thresholds.
• State sales tax at 6.875% (plus local add-ons pushing combined rates to 8%+ in places like Minneapolis), hitting supplies, equipment, and even proposed expansions to professional services.
• New payroll taxes like the 0.88% premium for paid family and medical leave (shared burden, but still a $2 billion annual hit statewide).
• Unemployment insurance hikes, retail delivery fees, vehicle registration jumps, metro sales tax increases—nearly $7 billion in new taxes/fees crammed through recent sessions.
• Mandates piling on: 10 days paid sick time, earned sick and safe time accrual (1 hour per 30 worked, up to 48/year), minimum wage bumps to $11.13 statewide (higher in cities like Minneapolis/St. Paul at $16+), paid family leave premiums, junk fee bans, data privacy rules—all layered compliance nightmares that crush startups, farms, and mom-and-pops while big players skate.
These aren’t accidents. They’re engineered barriers keeping power centralized, small operators dependent, and revenue flowing upward to fund the grift machine.
Picture the money staying in your pockets when we rip out this thieving apparatus:
• Lower taxes so farmers keep more from their harvest, families from their paychecks, entrepreneurs from their hustle.
• Regulatory relief: Strip avalanche of mandates, compliance checklists, and one-size-fits-all rules that treat family shops like corporate giants.
• No more pass-through grift factories—real oversight, cross-agency fraud checks, aggressive clawbacks, prosecutions that make examples.
• Lift the hardworking poor the honest way: Vocational training for real jobs, policies rewarding work over dependency, communities strong through faith, family, and free enterprise—not government handouts.
Lakeside towns buzzing with unburdened family businesses. Farms thriving without green mandate extortion or DEI slush funds. Kids in safe schools learning truth. A Minnesota where opportunity flows because thieves are locked out, not enabled.
This offends everything I stand for as a Navy vet, farmer, father, teacher, lifelong Minnesotan, and believer in Jesus Christ. Stewardship means protecting the vulnerable, not exploiting them. Judgment comes—here or hereafter—on those who twist compassion into corruption.
When I’m Governor, we dismantle the syndicate root and branch. Streamline government, crush excessive burdens, prosecute the looters, unleash Minnesotans to build and prosper. A constitutional republic where citizens—not criminals in suits—thrive.
Enough fake promises. Real hope. Real justice. Share this. Demand it. Join at parrish4mn.com.
For interviews or more:
Phillip C. Parrish, Candidate for Governor of Minnesota 2026
Campaign Manager Heidi Wanty: heidi@parrish4mn.com
Phone: 1 (612) 460-1717
Let’s make them sweat—and make Minnesota shine again. 🇺🇸
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