The fraud scandal grows and grows and grows
It is already so large that I can’t cover all the angles. Luckily, I don’t have to, because a roundup will serve.
(1) Excellent point:
If welfare and redistribution were really about helping people, then their proponents should care *more* about fraud. That’s money not going to the stated purpose of these programs. Their hostility to all scrutiny proves their stated goals were always lies. It’s just patronage.
(2) And from Stephen Miller, about the reporting on the subject:
I guess the question is why did the New York Times allow a kid with an iPhone to put millions of eyeballs on this instead of them.
Journalists would love to answer this question but they can’t. It’s lunacy. It’s industry suicide because they don’t want to called racist by their colleagues and they don’t want to do anything that might prove Donald Trump’s administration right on *a thing* like *anything*
(3) Transparency, not:
Stunning – it appears they have taken down the license look-up website so Minnesotans can’t see who the Medicaid service providers are or what licensing violations they may have.
(4) As Minnesota goes, so goes Ohio>?:
After the fraud scandal in Minnesota, a TikToker decided to investigate daycare centers in Ohio, which has the country’s second-largest Somali population.
By plugging the addresses into Google Maps, he discovered that many of the buildings didn’t look like typical childcare facilities—lacking playgrounds, proper signage, and even having blacked-out windows.
(5) DHS is investigating suspected fraud sites in Minnesota.
(6) Is this magnitude of fraud a possibility? I don’t know where the figure is coming from. But there’s little doubt that we’re talking about a very large figure:
It’s a very real possibility that the United States is looking at over $2.5 trillion/year in fraud from state and federal entitlements.
That’s more than next year’s estimated federal budget deficit.
This is a national security issue.
(7) Glenn Reynolds observes that, so far, there’s no evidence that Walz has committed a crime, and so he probably can’t be tried for anything. But this is what Reynolds says about the press coverage:
… [W]ith Walz on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024, why did no national or local “mainstream” journalists look into all this?
Given the previous prosecutions [in Minnesota is similar fraud cases years ago], 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 [and video on the subject] 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.
I think #2 goes by “Stephen L. Miller” to distinguish from the Stephen Miller who is a Trump adviser in the White House.
Minnesota attorney John Hinderaker points out that
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/12/barking-up-the-wrong-tree.php
heir hostility to all scrutiny proves their stated goals were always lies. It’s just patronage.
The scandal is not illegal immigration, it is vote-buying. — Kate
It bothers me when right-minded conservatives use language like “just patronage” or voting fraud is “shenanigans.”
No. The language should fit the severity of the actions.
The only real effective check against government corruption in a democracy is the ballot box. Yet, substantial vote fraud can create a political machine operation that is largely immune to such remedies. The same can be said for large scale vote buying.
This sort of thing has been going on for so long, and yet so little has been done to combat it.
An inlaw of mine, now gone, was an entering grad student in poly-sci at U. of Chicago about 65 or 70 years ago. He had a young wife and baby and really needed some income. So he signed up for some paid community outreach thing like voter registration plus some other things I don’t recall. His boss was quite open that he should only register people who were going to vote for the approved machine candidate. It’s the Chicago way. I suspect Philadelphia is just as bad, and other cities less well known for corruption.
About neo’s first block quote: I read a book in the late 70’s or early 80’s that researched and documented the exact same things happening at relatively large scale in one or more inner cities. I think it was written by Marvin Olasky, but I could be wrong. In that book he wrote at some length about the contrast between this sort of government disfunction and how traditional and effective religious charities have operated.
Decades ago I read about Medicare fraud. Far above $100B per year and yet only a tiny handfull of gov. employees were responsible for discovering it.
I did find a leftist honestly upset about this.
https://substack.com/@dennisonwrites/note/c-192827517?r=1tzyp2
This guy proposed maybe the fraud is WHY Kamala picked Tim.
https://x.com/i/status/2005329385373507584
I’m starting to think it may be more true than thought.
https://x.com/TheLastRefuge2/status/2005567238674477422?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2005567238674477422%7Ctwgr%5E6a0dfa11b4e93939c534011e5769196deacb7230%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F765510%2F
My understanding is an immigrant must have a US citizen sponsor to be legal. I further understand it was Lutheran pastors who served in that capacity in feckless Minnesota. Minnesota used to be a grand place 30 years ago. But that draws flies which vote for Walz. The flies in this case are black Somalis.
I did some back of napkin numbers about the situation in Washington state.
There are 14,200 people of Somali ethnicity living in Washington state (around 13,000 of them live in King County). According to the State department of Children, Youth and Families, there are 6747 licensed daycare providers in Washington. According to their website, 6.3% of them list Somali as the primary language– which is 425 daycare centers. Simple math gets you 1 daycare center for every 33 Somalis.
Compare that to our largest minority population, Hispanic/Latino at 1,185,000. There are 1041 licensed providers that list Spanish as their primary language, which is 1 daycare provider for every 1,139 Hispanic/Latino.
We have a small population of Russians in the state, 77,000. The state lists 37 as having Russian as their primary language, which works out to 1 provider for every 2,086 Russian ethnicity.
There are some assumptions using the data. There may be a large number of Somali speaking daycare providers because the number is licensed providers. That includes providers working out of their homes only caring for a few kids.
That could also hold for Spanish speaking or Russian speaking minorities, but the numbers don’t show that.
It seems clear that the potential abuse of generous government benefits in Washington state could reach to the Somali population here– though the total dollar figures would be significantly lower than Minnesota or Ohio.
According to WorldPopulationReview, there are 61,300 Somalis in Minnesota, 26,400 in Ohio and 14,200 in Washington state.
Possible corruption/fraud in King County, WA of the financial or franchise type? Inconceivable
Most Somalis live in King county (Seattle).
Here’s the date for King county:
Population approximately 13,000 Somalians with 349 licensed providers with Somali as their primary language.
Compare that to Hispanic/Latino population of 252,000 with 124 licensed providers with Spanish as their primary language.
Once again the numbers doesn’t prove anything, since we don’t know how many of these licensed providers are individual homes. But if it were a large single home providers, you would expect a similar ratio in the Hispanic population.
The other caveat is many/most of the Hispanic population also speak English, so there is no way of knowing whether the numbers are skewed because of that.
I’ve mentioned this before, but in Chicago a journalist named Mike Royko worked from 1955 – 1997. He grew up in an apartment above a bar to a Polish mother and Ukrainian father. He “briefly” attended junior college and served in the Air Force. As far as I know he was a lifelong Democrat, yet fearlessly covered some of the biggest scandals of the Chicago Democrat party. His 1971 book, “Boss” was a devastating take down of Chicago’s very powerful, Democrat machine politician, Richard Daley. Mike Royko did not have a college degree, let alone a degree in journalism. He was a brilliant writer, a ceaseless worker; fearless, curious, and unwavering in his pursuit of the truth. He worked as if it was a privilege to write for Chicago’s newspapers, entrusted with the responsibility to inform Chicagoans on what was happening in their city.
And I think most U.S. cities had people working in the newspaper business with similar work ethics and attitudes. As evidenced by the young man who made the video at the Minnesota “daycare” centers, and others posting online, that ethic and attitude is not dead. But it is almost completely absent from America’s news industry. We need an army of Davids fighting the goliaths of government and corporate America. Why do our newspapers and the network, television news departments no longer hire these people?
I wish that I didn’t believe that this could be true, but this is Minnesota after all, and during a FOX TV segment on the apparent massive theft of Federal funds going on in Minnesota featuring lawyer Johnathan Turley’s reaction, a Minnesota election law was mentioned in which someone who was a registered voter could “sponsor” eight other people to also become registered voters.
Here is an article about “sponsoring” voters for registration in MN.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/in_minnesota_they_also_steal_votes.html
Here’s some data regarding daycare payments in Washington state.
At the federal level, the money comes from a block grant, Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF).
It’s then paid directly to the daycare providers, in Washington state, the Working Connections Child Care (WCCC). It pays $4/hour for in home care, with a limit of 12 children (waivers are available).
In a commercial setting, it pays between $800-$1500/ month based on the area (can be higher for special needs or infants). The limit of the number of children is based on the facility.
The children eligible are under 13.
So how large is the potential fraud? The maximum could be between $40 and $120 million a year in Washington state or more.
If every licensed daycare (425) claimed to be watching 12 children for 8 hours a day/5 days a week/ 52 weeks a year the subsidy would be $42 million.
In a commercial setting, let’s assume the subsidy is $1200/mo/child. If all 425 day care facility claimed to have an enrollment of 20 children the subsidy would be $288,000 per facility with a total of $122 million.
The magnitude of the potential fraud depends on how many children the daycare facilities are claiming to have enrolled, and that’s a number that isn’t publicly available. The payments from the Working Connections Child Care (WCCC) is not public data.
Ohio has twice the Somali population than Washington state and Minnesota has 4.5 times. It could be a big number, but pales compared to the alleged Medicare/Medicaid fraud of up to $9 billion over a 7 year period.
Apparently Somalis aren’t the only wily “immigrants”? ripping U.S. taxpayers off.
Linked is a story about 8 gas stations in Texas, from their corporate names apparently run by “immigrants” from India, which somehow managed to snag a total of $32 million dollars in SBA 7 (a) grants.*
It seems like the programs which the Obama & Biden Administrations put into place, or how they “administered” them, just gave a whole lotta people a license to steal on an industrial scale.
* See https://x.com/info_maiden/status/2005809714508992776
Seeing all of this, one just wonders what percentage of all of the hundreds of billions in government payments which are paid out each year–ostensibly to help this or that group of people, organization, or sector of our society–are simply just lost to fraud–10%, 20%, 30%, more, perhaps much more?
And aren’t all of these parasites, these fraudsters living the high life, and laughing at all us naive taxpaying suckers.
In the case of the panoply of welfare benefits–SNAP, Section 8, cash benefits, disability payments, etc.–some of these welfare recipients even go on Youtube, bragging about how they game the system, don’t work, have no intention of working, and how they go to the grocery store, load up multiple carts with food each month, and eat better than many taxpayers.
Is this magnitude of fraud a possibility?
I asked my Magic 8 Ball, and it said, “Signs point to yes.”
I don’t know how the Democrats recover from this.
@Rufus T. Firefly,
Royko could be quite funny as well. Check out his quest to renew his driver’s license when he was over sixty five, or his ongoing feud with Frank Sinatra (Royko said Sinatra was bald and wore a toupee, which Sinatra furiously denied).
Sennacherib,
Like they always do….GOP is all talk, no action. The Democrats just walk away, and their loyal base of 50% of the population continues to vote for them.
Sennacherib on December 30, 2025 at 5:29 pm said:
I don’t know how the Democrats recover from this.
By no one in the Democrat/ Marxist Propaganda Ministry saying a word about it
You will see in the mid-terms how they recover from it, probably with more vote fraud.
1. Lots of Somalis in Maine. Fraud there too.
2. This government money in exchange for votes is the biggest scandal in the history of the Democratic party and it should cause its collapse. But it probably won’t.
All the top Dem leaders knew this was going on for years and did nothing.
3. The FBI needs to get into the crypto accounts of Tim Walz, Ilhan Omar and others.
4. I see that the Somali thieves bought lots of real estate in Kenya. Maybe DOJ can get ownership of those properties. Probably depends on treaties with Kenya.
5. People on X are mercilessly attacking Walz and the Star Tribune.
6. I actually learned about a Medicaid program for the elderly back in 2017 when I first started my elder law practice. There’s a lawyer/CPA in NY, Dave Zumpano, who essentially invented the elder law business for lawyers. We were told that if mom qualified on both a medical and financial basis, the state’s Medicaid program would pay a neighbor or grandkid to do work for mom as it was cheaper than sending mom to the nursing home.
It makes perfect sense, but I never had an occasion to use that program. Not the right facts and not enough volume of elder law cases for me.
It never occurred to me that this Medicaid program could be scammed for millions of dollars.
7. Former Creighton basketball coach Dana Altman has a saying, “Step on their throats.” The point is if you are up 10 in a game, keep going as the other team can come back.
The GOP needs to step on the throats of the Dems. This has to be THE campaign issue in 2026.
8. One possible solution is to strike deals with these Somali crooks and send them back to Africa with no right to return.
And if the statute of limitations hasn’t run on Ilhan Omar’s immigration fraud by marrying her brother, she needs to be indicted and deported.
It’s not only Somali culture which has endemic clan-based fraud and bribery habits. India has this problem, as does much of Africa, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Rufus T. Firefly: I remember Mike Royko! I lived in Chicago from 1969 to 1976. I always listened to him on the radio for entertainment & info on the corrupt Dem machine run by Mayor Daley (who stole the 1960 election in Illinois for John Kennedy). There are rumors that Daly, to show his good will, named a one way street out of Chicago for Royko.
clear explanation of what happens when immigrants don’t share our culture and why we have a massive fraud perpetrated by a incompatible culture by Clear Thinker.
https://thatskaizen.substack.com/p/minnesota-somali-fraud-and-the-elephant
physicsguy,
You’re right.
The Pluto mission cost less than the already proven fraud.
Yes, folk, you could go to the edge of the solar system for the money they stole, and have money left over.
Tangential point: Ilhan Omar marrying her brother has no bearing on her citizenship; her claim to citizenship is based on her father’s naturalization, although that is also, apparently, sketchy, since she spent years claiming she was no longer a minor at the time (today, she claims she’s a year younger.)
Oh, and also people have had difficulty finding any actual record of her father’s naturalization.
It looks like taxpayers are being bled dry by the “death of a thousand cuts,” as Somalis and others siphon off money meant to help American citizens who are actually in need, as they falsely claim need, or say that they are providing services that they never provide, defrauding what may be many dozens of different government programs for a total of billions of dollars.
It almost looks like some of these programs were designed to be ripped off, with the people supposedly “administering” and “monitoring” them either Leftist idealogues who knowingly let this happen, lazy, stupid, or themselves profiting from these scams.
Or perhaps this is not just happenstance, or ordinary fraud writ very, very large but is, instead, very, very deliberate–actually the Left’s diabolical Cloward-Piven strategy in action–getting government to make good on all of it’s promises, providing so much money that it eventually discredits/destroys/bankrupts the government itself.
This level of brazen fraud should enrage every single U.S. citizen and taxpayer in the U.S. and, from here forward, this rage should influence voting in every local, state, and Federal election.
And “just another” scandal…with off-the-charts harm the result:
“RFK Jr. actually embraces the science on trans kids”—
https://nypost.com/2025/12/30/opinion/rfk-jr-embraces-the-science-on-trans-kids/
Key grafs:
It’s here in Idaho too. And our useless GOP and governor Brad Little are too spineless to do anything about it.
“the Minnesota Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press have said not a word about his post as I write.”
“Journalistic malpractice refers to significant ethical or factual failures in reporting. Malpractice can lead to legal action, similar to medical malpractice, by failing to meet a professional “standard of care”.
This is not just Somalis they had lots of help. Heads must roll. Federal investigation into the responsible individuals with trials.
Re Mike Royko, he was huge in Chicago; on page 3 of the Daily News, and then the Tribune later. I saw him dining in a nice restaurant once, wearing a very sharp suit. Quite a contrast from the image I got from his writing: I pictured him sitting at his desk wearing a wife-beater and drinking Schlitz from a can!
But I don’t recall him being on the radio.
* * * * *
Wait a minute, I thought diversity was our strength!?
* * * * *
Good post by Snow at 8:41 pm. This Somali nonsense is another reason I am against most government spending, which confiscates people’s money to fund detrimental programs.
From TommyJay at 2:18 p.m.:
About neo’s first block quote: I read a book in the late 70’s or early 80’s that researched and documented the exact same things happening at relatively large scale in one or more inner cities. I think it was written by Marvin Olasky …
Maybe you’re thinking of Olasky’s 1992 gem of a book The Tragedy of American Compassion. (Notable: A non-fiction book without a subtitle!) It makes a strong case for private philanthropy/social service as much more effective than government welfare programs.
Part of the reason is explained in a favorite quote of mine from Kevin Williamson in his Encounter Broadside [extended essay] The Dependency Agenda, where he’s talking about the changes wrought by the welfare programs introduced or enlarged in the 1960s:
It is worth noting that under the status quo ante, the poor were largely dependent upon family members, churches, and other institutions that had nothing to gain from their dependency. Under the Great Society and its later permutations, they became dependent upon a professional class whose highly paid members were themselves dependent upon the dependency of their clients. Dependency became a valuable commodity. At the apex of the dependency food chain are the highest-ranking members of a political machine ultimately dependent upon dependency and highly invested in its spread.
Several prior commenters have enthused about (the late — very late) Mike Royko. I’m a native Chicagoan (from the city itself!), and I, too, was a great admirer of Royko. I think it was Jimmy Breslin who called Royko “the greatest journalist of his time in his country.”
But I’m puzzled by Paul in Boston’s recollections of Royko on the radio. Royko was a print guy, brilliantly so. The couple of times I heard him on the radio or TV, he was notably tongue-tied, and I think such appearances were blessedly rare.
Paul Nachtman,
I’m 90% sure I read something along those lines much earlier than 1992. There was another author who wrote on topics similar to Olasky, though I can’t recall his name at all.
Anyway, your points capture exactly what I was talking about. I love that quote paragraph at the bottom about dependency. Though I think it reflects a further and deeper progression of the rot compared to the book I was recalling.
I was an admirer of Royko. He wasn’t a manifestation of a type. His viewpoint was ‘predictable’ only to assiduous readers of his column. It was unadorned by social fiction, commonsensical, humorous, and never banal. I doubt he ever offered a contrived opinion. I do not know that I’d call him ‘brilliant’ and I suspect he’d have offered a deft retort to anyone who so described him. I think he was probably wrong about Frank Sinatra’s hair; if Sinatra was wearing a toupee, it was the most deftly constructed one imaginable. About Mayor Daley, that vacation home on Lake Michigan he bought for his family ca. 1964 (which the family still owns) does suggest he had an esoteric source of income. That aside, there isn’t much indication that RJD was himself on the take and much that is known about the man suggests that as a human being he was as good as it gets. I think it’s unfortunate that MR made Mayor Daley in particular a target and not others in Chicago or the Chicago system in general. The mayor’s wife was reserved when asked about public affairs; one of the short menu of comments she did make over a 20 year period was when she encountered a rack of paperbacks in a retail store which had copies of Boss on it. She tipped the rack over.
Cornhead said: “The GOP needs to step on the throats of the Dems. This has to be THE campaign issue in 2026. ”
LOL, when has the stupid party ever done that?? And I bet they never will. I’m beginning to get very cynical again over the current administration. Until I see some prominent Democrats in orange jumpsuits, it’s starting to look like more GOP kabuki theatre.
Re: Waltz and criminal charges – This is yet another example of my pet peeve about people failing to see any shades of gray in the behavior of public officials. There’s a heck of a lot of bad, disqualifying behavior that doesn’t rise to the level of criminal. This is that.
(And, FWIW, abusing the criminal law in an attempt to make it reach that bad behavior isn’t justice either.)
Good to know that CC™ knows that Tampon Tim is just a knucklehead and not a criminal knucklehead.
Peevish? Who knew?
Is encouraging massive corruption, then turning a blind eye to it, and then encouraging it some more, which in effect means
redirectingSTEALING massive amounts of public funds (AKA tax money) and giving them to illegal enterprises—all this done (performed?) by a grossly dishonest, elected political commissar—NOT criminal?Gosh, who knew….
…and then calling those who are trying to get to the bottom of this extraordinary corruption RACISTS!! (but of course) is the icing on the corruption cake…
(“Benjamins”, anyone?)
So he signed up for some paid community outreach thing like voter registration plus some other things I don’t recall. His boss was quite open that he should only register people who were going to vote for the approved machine candidate. It’s the Chicago way.
==
Put hard copy voter registration forms in post offices, local government buildings, state government buildings, and cafés. That’s all the outreach you should have.
==
I move in state a couple of years ago and re-registered in my new county. I later received a notice from a state agency informing me that my name could not be removed from the rolls at my former address unless I mailed the agency a signed consent card. Relict entries are a silver mine for fraudsters.
The mess in MN just illustrates , yet again, that when a massive federal program (e.g., dishing out billions of $$$$ in total to all 50 states) requires state
officials / employees to make sure there is little to no fraud, waste, etc., in managing and implementing the federally financed program, it is a slam dunk that fraud and waste will consume a significant percentage of all the dollars spent.
The state officials and employees have little to no incentive to do their jobs because it’s not their money being spent and they can use that money, if directed to the “right people” , to help get re-elected and/or fatten up their bank accounts.
There really is no way to stop this other than to cease all federal programs that send $$$ to the states, and force each state to spend their own money to address their own problems.
I will just throw out a figure, say 35% , of ALL federal spending is wasted as a result of fraud, inefficiencies, and just plain stupid programs (e.g., advancing LGBQT rights in Afghanistan , funding cartoons in Iraq, etc. ).
Govt. spending at the federal level is totally out of control and the massive US debt just keeps growing and growing. This build up of debt will eventually lead to an economic disaster if not addressed, and so far no administration is addressing this.
And if you think the US debt load is bad now, just wait until we have the Democrats in power in DC.
The governor of MN and his political appointees, HAD to know of the fraud there and refused to do anything about it.
Is this not complicity to commit fraud???
If evidence were to emerge (letters, emails, audio/video) of Walz ordering state officials to ignore fraud, or directly stopping investigations, he might face criminal charges. So far no such evidence has emerged. AG Ellison is at more risk at this point. The U.S. attorney’s office is handling the fraud cases with the resources it has, probably not enough to cover what’s been going on.
Don’t worry we “know” it wasn’t criminal, best intentions no doubt.
Same way they always do. Related to what Rufus T Firefly hinted at: compliant media. As long as the corporate media runs cover and excuses, enough folks will choose to believe them over the possibility of just how bad things are.
“It’s easier to fool a man than convince him he has been fooled.” As the saying goes. You engage with some of these folks and… well they truly believe it. If the government tomorrow said the sky was plaid they would convince themselves it was true.
As many have commented already, but I want to whole heartedly agree and emphasize, how we all dodged a bullet when that dipshit Walz did not become VP.
Harris and Walz were truly the Dumb and Dumber team.
@Art Deco,
As I recall (it’s been a long time), Sinatra told Royko; “I’ve got a concert coming up in Chicago. Come backstage and see me. I’ll let you pull my hair once to prove it’s not a toupee. If it moves, I’ll give you five thousand dollars. If it doesn’t move, I get to punch you in the nose. Deal?”
Royko said “You’re such a big star that I’ll let you punch me in the face anyway. People would probably pay five thousand dollars just to feel my swollen lip where you punched me.”
From Paul Nachman’s Williamson quote:
“At the apex of the dependency food chain are the highest-ranking members of a political machine ultimately dependent upon dependency and highly invested in its spread.”
Which brought to mind the adage that a democracy will only survive until the voting population realizes that they can vote personal largess from the government coffers.
I miss the pre – TDS Kevin D. Williamson. Few were better at speaking truth to power; including the presumed power of the “sovereign” We the People.
Happy New Year to Neo-land – coming in 44 minutes to the EST area.
A smiling Amy Bach, the Executive Director “mastermind” of the $270 million dollar “Feeding our Future” fraud scheme in Minnesota, has been ordered by a judge to pay back the money she earned directly from the scheme, $5.2 million dollars.*
(Perhaps she’s smiling because she has no intention of paying even a single cent of that money back?)
As I have written here before, from what I understand, quite often, after restitution is ordered, interest in following up to see if these penalties are, in fact, being paid, is just not there.
And, apparently quite often, perps do not pay back these penalties because they either do not have any assets (the smarter of them have likely squirreled away a lot of the money they stole in overseas bank accounts, hidden, or buried the cash somewhere, etc.), cannot or refuse to get a high paying job, or any job at all, or simply just refuse to pay anything.
My solution to this is that for, say, every thousand dollars which is not at least started to be paid back—and on a strict schedule, beginning a couple months after this penalty is handed down by a judge–they get to spend, say, six months in jail. Progress in their paying restitution to be assessed each year.
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm1kTy9sJTM
Any comment from Tucker? Vance? Hello.
Over the years, among people promoting various “programs”, it seems there is a surplus of compassion looking for subjects. Got to be somebody out there who needs to be compassionated or the folks are going to be feeling incomplete. Or something.
It’s hard to say what could combat that. No “program”, no matter its irrelevance and failure to address the actual problem (presuming there is one) can be contradicted by actual facts.
And making it ostentatious is even better.
And the politicians know it. It’s a boundless source of energy for their graft.
Cappy, those are some Carboniferous crickets (the age of giant insects) indeed.