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0 pointssdwr1mo ago0 comments

It's very indirect. The message is "the government is soft on fraud, partially because of liberal values", but the author does everything possible to not actually say it.

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tptacek1mo ago

I don't think that's indirect at all. It's pretty clearly what did in fact happen in Minnesota. I don't read the author as claiming it's endemic to liberal values, any more than the isomorphic pathologies are endemic to the finance industry (which Patrick also writes about), or the defense industry. Again: it's easy to find Democratic sources saying the same thing.

Why is it so difficult for people to acknowledge that Minnesota fucked this up badly? What is that going to cost us? The attempts to downplay it seem pretty delusive.

wredcoll1mo ago

Well, we live in a world where someone ran for president on the basis of "stopping welfare fraud" that turned out to be mostly a myth, so, you know, context is a thing.

As the article literally says, a whole bunch of people got sent to prison, that seems like pretty solid evidence.

The question is: now what?

tptacek1mo ago

Run the rest of them down? Figure out the total scope of the fraud, so we can enact countermeasures to prevent anything like it from happening again?

Fraud targeting social welfare programs is a grave crime; it strikes at public support for those programs. It enriches criminals very specifically at the expense of those people who would most benefit from the program.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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tptacek1mo ago

Why is it so difficult for people to acknowledge that Minnesota fucked this up badly? What is that going to cost us? The attempts to downplay it seem pretty delusive.

wredcoll1mo ago

Well, we live in a world where someone ran for president on the basis of "stopping welfare fraud" that turned out to be mostly a myth, so, you know, context is a thing.

As the article literally says, a whole bunch of people got sent to prison, that seems like pretty solid evidence.

The question is: now what?

tptacek1mo ago

Run the rest of them down? Figure out the total scope of the fraud, so we can enact countermeasures to prevent anything like it from happening again?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse