State flag lays an egg, wins Golden Turkey Award
In what turned out to be a two-project race, the new state flag defeated Tim Walz’s DEI staff to win American Experiment’s 2024 Golden Turkey Award. The Golden Turkey Award is a light-hearted contest to bring attention to wasteful government spending and allow Minnesotans to weigh in on the silliest projects of the year. Past winners include the new House Office Building, Feeding Our Future fraud, Gov. Tim Walz’s $6.9 million unused morgue and an extravagant rest stop on Highway 35. In 2021, the Southwest Light Rail project became the first project to receive a lifetime achievement award, putting it in the Golden Turkey Hall of Fame.
“Changing the Minnesota state flag was already unpopular, but when the legislature forced every local government in the state to immediately spend millions on new flags and police badges, it became a shoo-in for this year’s Golden Turkey Award,” said John Hinderaker, President of Center of the American Experiment.
This year’s contest had the highest voter turnout in the history of the award with 8,000 Minnesotans casting a ballot. The new flag and seal received 55.8% of the vote with Tim Walz’s DEI employees in second place at 39%. The other two projects trailed with 3.3% and 1.9%.
The 2024 winner: Minnesota’s new state flag and seal
It wasn’t enough for the 2023 legislature to spend the entire surplus, raise taxes and add thousands of new government bureaucrats. They had to do one more thing: change the state flag and seal. Democrats in the House and Senate put together a rushed process that lacked any real input from the citizens resulting in a bland new flag design and a state seal that violates the very law used to create it in the first place. Worst of all, the legislature added language forcing every city, county and school board to immediately replace all flags and seals using the old design, instead of allowing them to replace them over time as current supplies are exhausted. For this reason, the new flag and seal design earned the 2024 Golden Turkey Award.
Runner-up: Tim Walz’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion staff
For the fifth straight year, Gov. Tim Walz received the most nominations for American Experiment’s Golden Turkey Award, even though the award goes to a program or project, not a person. In an effort to appease the voters, the Golden Turkey Committee nominated the 173 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion staff members embedded across Tim Walz’s administration for a 2024 Golden Turkey Award. With each staff person costing the state at least $100,000 (when you figure salary and benefits), that’s $16 million that could be spent somewhere else or returned to taxpayers. The Walz administration is full of DEI positions with dubious titles like Equity and Inclusion Officer, Inclusion and Engagement Supervisor, Chief Inclusion Officer, and our favorite, Culturally Responsive Arts Education Art and Equity Systems Specialist. Nothing says Golden Turkey like a made-up title for a government bureaucrat who provides nothing of value to the people.
Third place: National Loon Center
The Golden Turkey Committee tried to warn Minnesotans during the election not to continue sending lottery money to the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF), but not enough listened. The result will be 25 more years of stupid spending from this fund and 25 more years of projects to feature in our annual award. A prime example set to break ground soon is the National Loon Center in Cross Lake, Minnesota with a price tag of $18.5 million dollars. Apparently, the lunatics backing our state bird became jealous of the National Eagle Center in Wabasha (also funded with state money) and decided the state needed a center dedicated just to loons. The lunacy of this huge expenditure of taxpayer money to build an extravagant center to honor a bird earned this project Third Place in the 2024 Golden Turkey contest.
Fourth place: A Dungeons & Dragons podcast
The Golden Turkey Committee returned to the State Arts Board’s Creative Individual grant program for this year’s low-dollar-but-high-outrage Golden Turkey Award nominee. In this case, $10,000 of sales tax revenue was sent to a guy in Duluth to produce four live Dungeons & Dragons podcast episodes in greater Minnesota. According to his application, “these live events will be free to the public, continuing a five-year storyline.” To his credit, he fulfilled the requirements of the grant and did in fact produce more episodes of the podcast, including several live events at a small theater in Duluth. But in what fantasy kingdom is giving some geek $10,000 to play Dungeons & Dragons on a podcast a good use of taxpayer money?
The Dungeons & Dragons grant was made possible by the Legacy Amendment to the State Constitution, which dedicates a portion of sales taxes to pay for Arts and Cultural Heritage programming. The Creative Individual grant program of the State Arts Board continues to provide perfect examples of Golden Turkey spending, including this year’s 4th Place winner.
The 2024 winner was announced live on the Garage Logic podcast the day before Thanksgiving.
For more information on the Golden Turkey awards, visit www.GoldenTurkeyMN.com.