On May 18 2026 16:59 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2026 14:29 dyhb wrote:On May 18 2026 13:21 Fleetfeet wrote:On May 18 2026 08:49 dyhb wrote:On May 18 2026 08:26 Fleetfeet wrote:On May 18 2026 07:14 dyhb wrote:On May 18 2026 01:57 Jankisa wrote:dynb, of course, comes to try and downplay the fascist propagandist by pretending like this guy "uncovered" fraud, when investigations and convictions on it predate this hysteria by quite a bit. Links to investigations including "failure to keep hazardous items away from children" are a little weird to link to, and a representative "told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS this showed 'oversight is incredibly lacking.'" Kind of like telling people that the drug investigation is a nothingburger because the cops investigated and arrested 2 low-level dealers last week. Let's check in with the star tribune for one second, State education officials repeatedly raised concerns about possible fraud in the federally funded meals program during the pandemic, but their supervisors stopped them from taking more aggressive action, according to law enforcement interviews and other investigative records newly obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Frontline regulators said that they questioned soaring reimbursement claims and suspicious food distribution operations to their supervisors long before prosecutors uncovered what became one of the nation’s largest pandemic fraud schemes.
Three state employees told investigators that their managers discouraged aggressive oversight because they were afraid of lawsuits. One believed the department’s leadership feared accusations of racism from Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of the fraud case, which largely served Minnesota’s East African community.
The interviews provide a rare inside account of the state’s botched response to early warning signs of fraud — and how legal concerns and delayed enforcement allowed the scheme to grow, ultimately siphoning more than $250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program overseen by the state education department. MN STShe said that her supervisors repeatedly stopped her from digging into suspicious reimbursement claims and discouraged her from visiting sites that seemed “unbelievable” to her. “Bock and her associates in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme used allegations of racism as a tactic throughout their criminal enterprise,” Buss said in the statement. She added it was litigation and court decisions that limited the department’s ability to prevent the fraud “not fear of being called racist.” Story just came out May 17th, 2026. It's not from a random youtuber, but established print journalism. I'm not on board with the method that happened to make this a national story with national attention and a lot more federal involvement. But I can't get with your method of crying fascism and pointing to the little that was done. Stories allege poor oversight and non-aggressive investigation (we aren't catching the fraud at a good rate). That's meat on the story. The object should be to stop the perpetrators prior to tens of millions or hundreds of millions going out the door. I do think "People are so afraid of being racist that they don't report" is a more interesting line than "89% of the fraud was Solmalians and that means ________", but in both cases there's good reason to tread lightly with regards to racism. The former is at least asking why this event happened, instead of leaving it hanging without exploring the context. It makes it seem like the 'journalist' is satisfied with "Well obviously it's because somalians are bad people trying to steal the heart of america" The two questions I had were whether he had stumbled across widespread fraud with lazy or missing enforcement and whether the example of state-funded daycares were the tip of the iceberg in state mismanagement of public funds. This is a developing story. Feel free to comment on the news article I linked about a different program and a different department and concerning comments from people that tried to stop that example of fraud. I already gave you the example of a partisan hack protester agitating against police and happening to catch the police in a clear instance of excessive force and assault. You can choose to say "Look at this partisan protester. He's such a bad man. He has terrible opinions. And besides, the police have had internal investigations recently that led to arrests!" You can also choose to say, "That looks pretty bad. Yeah, the guy that caught it engages in scummy behavior, but is there an innocent explanation to all of this, or is actually exactly what it looks like and more common that I would presume?" More directed at Jankisa than you, but read his post to me. It's almost beside the point to focus on the societal reasons why a particular community got more clued into the (allegedly) weak anti-fraud protections in several state programs. I don't care if it was a bunch of neighbors in Maple Grove that took the state for $100 million over years. I care that money taken from taxpayers did not go to the needy and deserving. My presumption is that the youtuber got lucky in those hallways of identical businesses in a windowless office building, and the other stuff, and then it was so comical that it went viral. There's no fairness in who strikes the match that starts the national fire. I kind of wish it was so-and-so veteran reporter for the Star Tribune that spent two years of investigating the issue and asking questions of state officials, but it wasn't. Was he the first to it, though? It seems he wasn't (specifically regarding the 89% Somali fraud stuff) If he wasn't the first to it, your partisan hack protester analogy doesn't hold. To bring it up to speed, Nick is the third party in that scenario, noticing the partisan protester and the police officer, and making a point of highlighting the race of the police officer. You and I agree that we don't particularly care if the offender is Somalian, Norwegian, or anything else. It's strange, then, that Nick is here really drilling in the fact that the police officer is a particular race. In fairness - I hadn't heard of Nick Shirley before and am not familiar with his particular coverage. It seems to me that he's a third party 'journalist' that picked up a story and ran with an immigrant slant to it. He's relevant to the story insomuch as he went viral in telling about it, but isn't relevant in that he didn't start the story and doesn't seem particularly interested in seeing it to a conclusion. Please, correct me if I'm mistaken! I don't think we necessarily disagree here. He's the guy that made it go viral. You can hate that fact or love that fact. Quality Learing Center entered the national dialogue. What happens later is at one remove from him: is there widespread fraud, are the state systems too corrupt or incompetent to deal with it, and how many programs are affected? It's not a youtuber that's in charge of the follow-up; he's now a bit player. I linked the story that broke yesterday on Feeding Our Future as a compare/contrast. You can imagine the same elements impacting both. Were there the same derelict supervisors in other departments, inaction from the specter of lawsuits, and fears of accusations of racism if oversight was actually applied? None of those questions involve Shirley! He's on to London or the next meme/culture-war flash point getting clicks for monetization. The national attention is what put public pressure to examine the system. It might also help counteract whatever corrupt networks kept the fraud going for so long. Huh, that's an interesting perspective, at least. If I'm understanding it - Shirley took an... anti-immigrant?... slant on an existing story and that caused it to get enough national attention for people to actually look at an deal with it. Meaning that even if Shirley's intentions were bad it wouldn't matter, because the end result was good. If that's what you're angling towards, that feels generous? People were dealing with it before he said anything and it's hard to say it'll be dealt with better now because of the national attention. The national attention is as relevant to the issue as Shirley is - you could run propaganda stating that potholes in the street are the biggest issue faced by Americans and everyone will be so very grateful when you fix it, it just doesn't mean potholes were ever the biggest problem in America. Likewise, you’re being very generous to say that the issue was being dealt with already and it’s hard to say that increased scrutiny will matter! We’ll see the result of the increased investigations to determine if that was remotely true. With hundreds of millions across multiple government programs, perhaps billions of dollars in total, it’s worthwhile to consider that the politically powerful were knowingly enabling a broken and corrupt system, and weakly trying to deflect blame for their lack of oversight or care that the money went to the people it was intended to help. I had hoped that the linked article was enough to show the possibility of that. The fraud was obvious and there were investigations, yet top officials were stopping the best efforts to put the money back to where it should go. They’re obviously not named Nick Shirley, but they’re probably quite glad to keep the attention on Nick Shirley to protect themselves and their future aspirations.
|
EPT
