Government at all levels is basically broke, especially in blue states.
Government leaders’ chief solution to this poverty seems generally to involve extracting more money from the citizenry.
But where does the money they’ve already extracted go?
Based on what’s turning up in Minnesota, much of it is going to political cronies — who then recycle cash back to the same politicians who got it for them.
Last week independent journalist Nick Shirley did what any mainstream journalist could have done, but didn’t.
He found a list of Somali-run “day care” institutions funded by the state, then visited them to see what kind of care they were offering.
The answer is, the kind with no actual kids.
In all, Shirley identified approximately $110 million worth of fraud.
These institutions were supposedly visited by state inspectors — who sometimes noted violations, but didn’t note that the whole thing was a scam. (One of these “educational” facilities even misspelled “learning” on its signage.)
Shirley’s massively viral video — with 116 million views and counting — inspired others to dig into political donation records.
Sure enough, recipients of the daycare funding were making big donations to, you guessed it, Democratic politicians.
First to come under scrutiny is Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who represents the district where many of the scams — which may have siphoned off a staggering $9 billion — are centered.
Omar’s venture-capitalist husband is quietly scrubbing his website of key officer details as questions grow over how the congresswoman suddenly acquired a $30 million fortune.
Now Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ bumbling 2024 running mate, is starting to get some tough questions.
John Hinderaker, whose Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment think tank has been on top of this fraud story for years, explains this scandal isn’t exactly new.
A decade ago the FBI investigated Somali child-care fraudsters for opening daycare centers with no kids and collecting state money for fictitious children.
“A number of Somalis went to prison, but it didn’t deter others from carrying out similar frauds, on a grander scale,” Hinderaker wrote on his PowerLine blog.
Walz, who was in Congress when the last batch of Somali scam artists faced charges, can’t be ignorant of this history.
Does this mean Tim Walz is going to jail? Unlikely.
“Did Tim Walz know the frauds were going on?” Hinderaker asks. “Of course. Even Walz isn’t that stupid.
“But absent taking bribes, of which there is zero evidence, he has not committed a crime.”
Probably correct.
The FBI is surging investigators to Minnesota in search of more fraud — and director Kash Patel says what we’ve seen so far just the “tip of a very large iceberg.”
Perhaps high-level officials will someday face charges.
But until then, this scandal leaves additional questions to be addressed.
First, with Walz on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024, why did no national or local “mainstream” journalists look into all this?
Given the previous prosecutions, the background of a state’s governor on a national ticket should be a top priority for any honest press.
(I know, haha, I said “honest press.”)
Even now, Minnesota press isn’t covering this story.
Shirley’s findings went uber-viral on social media — but the Minnesota Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press have said not a word about his post as I write.
Well, like much of the national media, these papers have long had a hand-in-glove relationship with the state’s Democrats.
And as humorist Jim Treacher puts it, they see their job as determining what stories the public doesn’t need to know about, because they might hurt the Democratic Party.
The other question, of course, is whether this scandal extends to other states, too.
And the answer is, almost certainly.
Where money floats around without adequate safeguards, fraud is almost inevitable — and many federal and state programs seem almost deliberately designed to facilitate fraud.
I added that “almost” purely out of courtesy.
This month a whistleblower in Maine alleged that the state’s Medicaid program was bilked out of millions by another Somali scammer.
And California’s nonpartisan state auditor recently issued a report on “high risk” state programs that found billions lost to wrongful food-assistance and other welfare claims.
The extent of the loss is staggering, even to cynics like me.
But what do we do?
We could try to find more honest public officials. (Haha, I said “honest public officials”).
Extensive arrests and prosecutions — not only of the scammers, but of the bureaucrats who turned a blind eye — won’t magically make our officials honest, but it might make them think twice.
And we could simply turn off the cash spigot by cutting welfare programs way back.
If we leave more money in taxpayers’ pockets, it’ll be harder for public officials to steal it.
I know, crazy talk.
And yet — it would work.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
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