BTR1701 <
atropos@mac.com> wrote:
The legacy corporate media on the Minnesota Somali fraud scandal:
(1) Diversity is our strength!
(2) Immigrants are the fabric of Minnesota.
(3) Only $9 billion was stolen.
(4) If you notice it, you're racist.
(5) Somalis are the real victims here.
I was going to comment after listening to a radio analysis earlier, On
the Media.
A Deadly ICE Shooting in Minnesota. Plus, Trump Plays King in Venezuela.
On the Media
WNYC Studios
January 9, 2026
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/a-deadly-ice-shooting-in-minnesota-plus-trump-plays-king-in-venezuela
Please note that the second segment, starting twenty minutes in, is real journalism about Venezuala from a Venezuala exiled in Montreal. He's
quite skeptical about Trump but then rattles off crimes that the Maduro
regime committed. Yes, the drug trafficking was real. Trump made up shit
about what drugs were being trafficked and to where, but the journalist
said that corruption from drug trafficking was pervassive throughout
society. He also explained what Hugo Chavez did and why he and nearly
his entire family and nearly all his friends are in exile.
Back to rampant Somali fraud. The journalist interviewed was Jeffrey
Meitrodt, Minnesota Star Tribune. They go over and over the absurd
rhetoric versus Somalis, making the case that it's racist, etc. When one
argues that the entire community committed fraud and one can point to
the one recipient of welfare funds who wasn't, the argument is lost.
That's about not saying absolute shit in the first place, not that there
was no significant fraud.
At first, I though Nick Shirley did legitimate reporting but now it
sounds like the whole thing was a cheap shot. Also, Shirley was led to
these day care centers by David Hoch and didn't choose them himself. In
fact checking the ten locations, the fact-checking reporter, another
reporter with Meitrodt, was able to obsrve five locations. There were
children. That's not quite debunking Shirley but that does tell us that
Shirley was not perforning the days-long surveillance necessary to announce that no children were being cared for. They didn't debunk Shirley's claims
on the other five locations but neither did Shirley justify his claims.
https://www.startribune.com/day-care-fraud-minnesota-video/601554760
I'm withdrawing my support for the kid.
More than half way into the interview, the reporter is finally asked
about the fraud. Remember, the fraud was ignored by state government; it
was this newspaper that brought it to the public's attention. The
interviewer stated,
Fraud has been a perennial storyline for Minnesota leaders,
investigators, and newsrooms for many years. It's also true that
some Somali Americans have been implicated before, most famously
in the prosecution of Feeding Our Families, a Minnesota
nonprofit that fraudulently received over $240 million during
Governor Tim Walz' tenure. This week, he decided to throw in the
towel.
Walz's political career has come to an ignomineous end; no story there.
The reporter then named the better-known fraud cases.
Note that from local reporting, top officials in state government were
not persuing the fraud investigation because of fear of loss of
political support from the Somali community. This is what horrified
people and finally made it a national story prior to the Shirley video.
That's Walz being paternalistic. They can't help being corrupt because
of widespread corruption in Somalia. The entire community is dishonest;
those not participating in fraud don't want the criminals prosecuted.
If anything, Trump jumped on the bandwagon more than a decade late.
To paraphrase an infamous Trump quote, there's bad rhetoric on both
sidss. Don't make it about racism and don't make it racist. Trump could
have taken the moral high ground and just promised that state
Republicans would provide good government.
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