Note: I am interrupting my extended sabbatical (which will soon involve spending most of the next four months overseas working on two books) from commenting on news of the day to dilate John’s post immediately below about how Minnesota Democrats reversed course on investigating social service program fraud in Minnesota. I thought about posting this just as a comment, but as it grew I then thought, what the heck. . .
John is on to an example of Reagan’s axiom that “when liberals feel the heat, they see the light.” The welfare fraud in Minnesota, which is now being revealed in several other states, is simply too hard to ignore or deflect. We’ll see whether in Minnesota, California, Ohio, and other states where massive fraud has been detected, the bureaucracy will be able to conceal, or destroy evidence of, the extent of the fraud. I’m suspicious Minnesota Dems got the green light to vote for an investigation only after receiving word that the evidence has been destroyed.
Slowly it has occurred to me that this is not simply bad oversight or poor program management. I think it is a deliberate strategy of Democrats not just to tolerate social service fraud—but to expand it on purpose. It is, in one sentence, ersatz wealth redistribution. It may be inefficient, but in the absence of open redistribution or some kind of universal basic income system, it will have to do.
It occurred to me in recent days that this shift may have begun out here in California in 1994. After the severe Northridge earthquake in 1994, FEMA showed up, checkbook in hand, to do their usual FEMA disaster relief drill. But soon there were angry cries from the usual leftist hustlers and political machine grifters that FEMA was being too slow in cutting checks, and didn’t they know people were suffering! Word came down from the Clinton Administration for FEMA to relent, drop their due diligence and verification process, and just pass out checks, no questions asked. It became a pattern for FEMA ever since. (Some other time, perhaps, I’ll relate going into a FEMA trailer in my neighborhood after a flooding incident near me a few years ago. Very eye-opening.)
Food Stamps and other welfare programs have long had their fraud problems, which varied from state to state depending on which party ran the place in most cases (though Republican governors could be just as clueless as Democrat governors are mendacious). But then the Covid emergency spending programs came along, which meant there was no due diligence at all, as all the pressure was to send checks out the door by 8:30 am every day. Even California’s derelict and deceitful government estimated the fraud in the tens of billions. Then add the force-feeding of Medicaid under Obamacare, and you have this ersatz fraud/wealth redistribution machine going into overdrive. For liberals everywhere, that Somalian immigrants were disproportionate beneficiaries were a feature, not a bug.
This ought to be one of the most significant political scandals in American history. Will Republican campaigns this year be able to make a coherent attack about it?
And now back to academic matters. Snore. . . Though I am thoroughly absorbed by the new David Bolotin course notes on Plato’s Republic.
