Category: crime and punishment

ICE Melt in Minnesota

ICE, Minnesota, shooting, protest, riot, violence

Americans are strongly united against people being gunned down on our streets by federal agents.

Saturday, the victim was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse working at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. Pretti was an American citizen with a conceal-carry permit. Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino quickly informed the public: “During this operation, an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol agents with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots.

“The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID,” added Bovino. “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

Had this farfetched narrative been even close to true, maybe we could partly reconcile the killing we witness relentlessly in cellphone videos. I like to reserve judgment until all the facts are in, but to me the videos don’t implicate Pretti as a “terrorist” in the slightest and leave little doubt that, in law enforcement lingo, this was not at all a “good shoot,” i.e. a justified use of deadly force.

Yesterday, President Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he had a “very good telephone conversation” with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. “The president agreed the present situation can’t continue,” offered Frey.

This change is driven democratically: Republicans at the White House, in Congress and across the country know the voters will crush them if this continues through the fall elections.

Now if voters can only unite on reform beyond merely stopping the shooting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags ice, Minnesota, protest, riot, shooting, violence

Accountability crime and punishment fraud

Watchdogs That Don’t Bark

Minnesota, watchdog, racism, fraud, thieves, nice

Yesterday, I refrained from completely quoting Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, saving for today the juiciest part. After declaring the fraud in Minnesota dwarfed by what he saw in California, Oz said, next: “which is whole-scale cultural malfeasance around health care.”

“Cultural”?

Dr. Oz clarified at length: it’s about the cover-up. Minnesota’s fraud network? Bureaucrats knew. But when a whistleblower tried to toot on the proverbial whistle, these folks, Oz explained, were “culturally … dissuaded, intimidated, from speaking up.”

This would happen “any time people raised the possibility that, for example, the Somalian subpopulation, who have different cultural mores than the folks who have historically been in Minnesota, might be taking advantage of systems that were built for Minnesota nice people.”

The “cultural” aspect is the pseudo-niceness of political correctness. “So you have well-meaning people trying to be nice, trying not to ruffle any feathers. If you do ruffle feathers, you get outed.” The auditors lacked the temperament to actually audit, with those daring few speaking up systematically prevented — shuffled away — from doing any actual work.

“Although you may still have a job there, you don’t get to do anything in that job.”

While Oz claims not to know how high up cover-for-fraud goes, I’ve a hunch that the smart ones in government know all-too-well what they are doing. They certainly know the fear. And use it.

It’s suffused throughout: “cultural.”

This story is not unrelated to the grooming gangs in Britain, Finland and elsewhere, allowed for years by police to carry on what we used to call “white slavery” because the cops feared being called racist.

You cannot have watchdogs too “nice” to bark.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags fraud, law and order, Minnesota, racism

crime and punishment fraud too much government

Oz in Fraudland

Minnesota, California, Dr. Oz, fraud, socialism

Ten days ago, I quoted Veronique de Rugy, warning that Minnesota’s day-care fraud scandal was “only the tip of the iceberg.”

Beyond subsidized daycare? Health care, home health care, Medicaid.

Fraud, fraud, fraud.

But it wasn’t just a lone Reason scholar saying it. “What we’re seeing in Minnesota … is dwarfed by what I saw in California,” The Epoch Times quotes Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Minnesota, Dr. Oz said, “is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Just in California’s hospice and home health care, Oz figures, fraud rockets up to at least $4 billion.

Add a few billion here and there and soon you’re talking real money.

I titled my commentary quoting Ms. de Rugy “The Tip of the Socialism-berg.” Remember Mr. Socialism? Karl Marx? He introduced to the world a complicated, rather magical theory of exploitation in market society focusing on “surplus value.” While I have trouble making heads or tails of his theory — seems utterly nuts — I do know something about its origin.

Marx nabbed it from classical liberal French scholars who preceded him. But they said the exploitation was through government mechanisms: it’s those who skim off of taxes who exploit the masses.

Marx turned it upside down.

So let’s turn things right-side up: we all know that when it comes to policy, good intentions don’t make up for bad consequences. And those who de-fraud the taxpayers don’t have “good intentions.”

They’re thieves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags California, Dr. Oz, fraud, Minnesota, socialism

crime and punishment ideological culture subsidy too much government

Tip of the Socialism-berg

socialism, immigration, welfare, communism, self destruction, suicidal empathy

“In 2024 alone, state Medicaid Fraud Control Units reported more than 1,151 convictions and more than $1.4 billion in civil and criminal recoveries,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason. “Federal enforcement recovers a tiny share of what is stolen. Fraud that goes undetected never appears in the data.”

And then she makes a claim that increasing numbers of astute observers make: “That’s only the tip of the iceberg.” She goes on to suggest that Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and “many other welfare programs” constitute a huge hunk of fraud.

The solution? “If we want less fraud,” she argues, “we need less government.”

Fraud and big government seem to go hand in hand. At least this kind of big government, which resembles the biggest kind of government imaginable. For taking wealth from many productive American citizens and giving it to a small but growing population of refugees from distant lands, that’s not necessarily fraud, I suppose, but it is something close to socialism.

We see in Venezuela just how devastating rule by thieving socialists can be. (Hugo Chavez nationalized oil industry infrastructure and then ran it into the ground.) In Minnesota and in other states of the union, we see a similar ethic. When done on a limited basis, we could call it “helping the poor,” the folks who just cannot produce what they need. That’s how transfer socialism was sold to us.

And they could say, truthfully, that’s not full socialism.

But extending the beneficiary class from our most needy friends and neighbors to the less-and-less needy, and then to waves of refugees from other countries, that’s a recipe for disaster. Like socialism when “full.”

How far should Americans go to help “others”? To our own ruin?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Communism, immigration, socialism, suicidal empathy, taxes

crime and punishment international affairs U.S. Constitution

The Dictator’s Arrest

The U.S. military captured Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Saturday; a lot of people who hate Donald Trump are complaining about the president’s decision to “arrest” the foreign head of state.

Sure, it’s an act of war.

Authorized by Congress? Not really, but that’s hardly unusual.

There is that 2020 indictment, unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice during Trump’s first term, accusing Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials of conspiring with Colombian guerrilla groups (like the FARC) to traffic massive quantities of cocaine into the United States. This was updated in a superseding indictment unsealed over the weekend, which added Maduro’s wife, son, and others as defendants.

Specifically, the charges are:

Narco-terrorism conspiracy.
Conspiracy to import cocaine.
Possession of machine guns and destructive devices.
Conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.

Considering that Venezuela is a sovereign state and can have whatever drug policies or gun laws it wants, all this might seem a tad … ridiculous.

Most people, however, will likely be moved by two very different lines of thinking:

Maduro was an evil tyrant, and it’s good that his murderous regime has been (sorta) toppled; and
The operation was skillfully done, demonstrating U.S. military strength.

Is the effort coherent and compatible with other international military stances of the United States? Debatable.

How does it affect, say, the U.S. position on Taiwan? Will this encourage or discourage the People’s [sic] Republic [sic] of China?

One could argue both ways. As a successful demonstration of military might, it will likely dissuade the Chinazis. But if it turns world opinion against the U.S., the opposite will likely prove true.

Still, isn’t it hard to side with a dictator? I mean Maduro.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags drugs, Maduro, Trump, Venezuela, war

crime and punishment government transparency subsidy

Learing in Minnesota

These days, we are apt to see the “meme” (joke) about the news before the news itself.

Take “Learing.” If you haven’t seen Nick Shirley’s YouTube video blowing the lid off what has quickly become the biggest fraud story of our time, you may not get the joke.

Some 30 days ago, my “Red-Flagged Welfare Fraud” decried “the more than $1 billion in fraud” conducted mostly by Somalis in Minnesota, taking taxpayer money and siphoning it off for personal and perhaps even terrorist benefit. Two weeks later, a weekend update — “Walz Waltzes, Spins” — discussed the Governor of Minnesota’s lame attempts to seem “in charge.”

Now, the fraud total is estimated to be over nine billion!

A new element of the story is young Mr. Shirley’s reporting. He went to “day care centers” all over Minneapolis, confronting “workers” and noticing there were no children actually being fed or taught. These were sham programs.

In a partly funny moment, he appeared in front of one alleged day care that had misspelled its own name on the building’s sign: “Quality Learing Center.”

A whole lot of folks on X — but not on BlueSky — thought this was funny-haha.

The rest of us shake our heads. It may not even be funny-peculiar, as inquiries into more states have begun, with Washington and Ohio receiving the most attention so far.

We’ll need more Nick Shirleys to cover it all, for the mainstream press has shown … some reluctance to put in much elbow grease.

Meanwhile, there is a silver lining, expressed last night on Hannity by Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project: “It actually kind of makes me relieved that there were no children in these obviously corrupt and probably dangerous daycare facilities.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags crime, Minnesota, scandal, welfare

crime and punishment government transparency privacy

Transparency, Weaponized

Jeffrey Epstein, law, transparency, privacy

Transparency is usually a good thing. But so is privacy. And so, too, are limits on government power.

Which bring me to the Epstein files — or, more accurately, those files bring me here.

“I don’t think we’ve had a scandal like this in this country,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D‑Calif.) offered yesterday on Meet the Press, “and what we’re asking for is justice for those survivors.”

I want justice, too — that is, the prosecution of any crime grand juries honestly believe was likely committed.

By anyone! No matter how powerful that suspect might be.

On the other hand, the Epstein File Transparency Act, which will be voted on this week in the U.S. House of Representatives and for which Khanna is a primary sponsor, “would require the Justice Department to declassify and release all files pertaining to the prosecution of the late sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.”

The public has a right to know!

But does it?

And if so, does that ‘right’ mean we permit the federal Department of Justice to use prosecutorial power to grab incriminating evidence on “suspected criminals” and then weaponize and deploy that information not to prosecute a crime in a court of law, but rather to publicize the damaging dirt discovered in the court of public opinion?

From then-FBI Director James Comey’s ridiculous public preening over the non-prosecution of Hillary Clinton in 2016 to the demanded release of the Epstein files today, we must be careful the DOJ does not become an opposition research firm for the party in power, using badges and guns. Or the world’s most outrageous doxxing scheme.

Our criminal justice system should do one thing and only one thing: Prosecute crimes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags jeffrey epstein, law, privacy, transparency

crime and punishment regulation

Fix-It Man Pardoned

Troy Lake, the mechanic who helped truckers and bus drivers keep their vehicles going by removing crippling emissions systems, paid the price — jailed for this “crime,” and also fined $52,000.

Prosecutors made an example out of the Wyoming fix-it man for following a practice that had become mandatory to keep rigs — in his case, at least 344 heavy-duty diesel trucks — on the road.

I’ve discussed his case, saying that President Trump should pardon him for this non-crime.

Though Troy Lake served about seven months in a federal prison, and he’s been out for a while, the conviction was still hanging over his head.

Now President Trump has indeed pardoned Mr. Lake.

He learned about it from a congratulatory voicemail left by U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, calling to “let you know how very sorry I am that this even happened to you guys but how delighted I am that the pardon has come through.”

“It’s great,” says 65-year-old Lake, who broke down after hearing the good word. “It’s news that, you know — I guess I look at it as, there are some good things that happen in the world.”

Troy and his wife, Holly, also tearfully relieved by the news, are grateful to Senator Lummis, Wyoming legislators, and others who went to bat for him.

About the environmental regulations that sent him to prison for helping diesel drivers survive, he says, “We need to sit down and think about a more logical way of doing it, not putting people out of work.”

Talk about an understatement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags pardon, regulations, Troy Lake, Trump

crime and punishment

The Dorito Bandito Threat

A student at Kenwood High School in Baltimore County didn’t know what he was inviting when he munched on Doritos after football practice.

“They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me,” Taki Allen said of the police in about “eight cop cars” who surged to his location.

“They searched me, and they figured out I had nothing,” Allen recalled. “Then, they went over to where I was standing and found a bag of chips on the floor. I was just holding a Doritos bag — it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun.…

“The first thing I was wondering was, was I about to die? Because they had a gun pointed at me.”

The school’s security system is “AI-powered.”

It “saw” a gun, not Doritos plus finger.

An alert went out before the security system’s finding had been confirmed. The alert was soon cancelled, but the school principal didn’t know this when she called the police, who in turn acted with leap-first/look-afterward brio.

We can’t blame AI. We cannot blame insensate artificial intelligence, so-called, any more than we can blame knives and guns for the way these inanimate objects “act.” The humans in this case bungled bigtime. They should reform.

Steps to take include never acting on the basis of unverified AI claims and never using drunken, hallucinogenic AI as one of your call-the-cops triggers to begin with.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags AI, crime, police, surveillance

crime and punishment First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Quit Banging on Brits

U.K., censorship, free speech, freedom, British, police

We hear so much bad news about censorship coming out of the United Kingdom that it’s almost shocking when something good happens instead.

That good news is a retreat from harassing innocent people for posting online too freely for the taste of British police enforcers.

In the big picture, the change in policy by the Metropolitan Police Service is but a minor tactical withdrawal in the pursuit of a censorship agenda that is otherwise proceeding on all fronts. It’s not so minor for people like, say, comedy writer Graham Linehan.

Several weeks ago, Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport by five armed officers.

“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online.” His sin was posting a few tweets critical of transgender activists.

The charges against Linehan have been dropped.

And from now on, says the Met, it will stop investigating “non-crime hate incidents.” A spokesperson explains that the commissioner “doesn’t believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates.…”

The “non-crime hate incidents” will still be logged, though.

The policy of harassing Britons for cranky words has been softened before, by the Tories. When Labour came in, the new government promptly hardened things again.

And further caution: Met policy is not government policy.

So this particular hammer for banging upon speakers daring to offend the easily offendable could come swinging down again at any moment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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