Category: subsidy

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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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crime and punishment government transparency subsidy

Learing in Minnesota

Minnesota, quality learing center, meme

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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Accountability ideological culture subsidy

Red-​Flagged Welfare Fraud

Minnesota, Somalia, refugees, immigration, crime, theft, tolerance, racism, folly

“Staggering in its scale and brazenness.” 

That’s how The New York Times describes the more than $1 billion in fraud that “took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.”

Quite a lucrative business model: Stealing from programs to prevent homelessness and keep children fed during the pandemic, the crooks instead “spent the funds on luxury cars, houses and even real estate projects abroad.” 

So far, prosecutors have convicted 59 people, with “all but eight of the 86 people charged” of “Somali ancestry.”

According to Ryan Pacyga, an attorney representing several defendants, The Times reports that “some involved became convinced that state agencies were tolerating, if not tacitly allowing, the fraud.”

What?

“No one was doing anything about the red flags,” argues Pacyga. “It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it.”

Why was nothing done?

Well … the federal prosecutor contends that what The Times calls “race sensitivities” (read: fear of being called racist) were “a huge part of the problem.” 

One former fraud investigator, a Somali American named Kayseh Magan, blames “the state’s Democratic-​led administration” which was “reluctant to take more assertive action in response to allegations in the Somali community.”

“There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community,” Magan explains, “which is a core voting bloc.” 

For Democrats.

Very expensive votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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subsidy too much government

Free Transit Isn’t Free

Mamdani, New York City, homeless, socialism, communism

If Zohran Mamdani, the Big Apple’s openly democratic-​socialist, covertly communist mayoral candidate makes it into Gracie Mansion, he will try to enact many plans to improve — i.e., worsen — things.

The candidate wants to increase taxes and government spending, reduce freedom and individual responsibility. The standard Democratic agenda, but foisted bigger and faster.

One announced plan is to scrap mass transit fees.

Taxpayers would then suffer new costs. But so would riders who travel “free.” Greater crowding is one. Another is the kind of people who would be more often riding, no longer discouraged by having to pay fares or having to risk arrest for jumping a turnstile. Riders would be plagued by more bums and more criminals.

Beggars already being a common sight on NYC subways, it’s easy to project that ending financial and physical barriers to entry would only encourage more. Criminals would also be encouraged.

We might consider what happened elsewhere when this has been tried. Kansas City, Boston, Philadelphia — a “scientific socialist” would insist on a thorough study of all those cases, but Mamdani’s merely mentioned Bogotá’s, and is not pushing a study, maybe because he’s seen the mess Albuquerque’s in, after eliminating its one-​dollar bus fare in 2023. Buses were soon being used as “rolling homeless shelters.” Local media also reported that they were “being used as getaway vehicles for shoplifters.…  The addition of security guards on buses has undoubtedly caused criminals to think twice, but it has not solved the problem.”

The author of these words, Paul Gessing, is hoping that recounting Albuquerque’s experience will convince Mamdani to scrap his free-​transit proposal. Should Mamdani become mayor, he may eventually be forced do so, but probably only after first making everybody suffer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption subsidy too much government

Ax Tax-​Funded Tax-Grubbing

Texas, taxes, lobbying, corruption

Some people in pursuing their business or charitable projects rely only on the voluntary support of customers or patrons. Other people rely on government funding, perhaps by default because it’s “always been that way.”

Still others not only feel entitled to government funding but are quite importunate about it, going so far as to use taxpayer dollars to pay for lobbying the government for even more taxpayer dollars. 

My theory? If taxpayers weren’t so routinely robbed to fund lobbyists, fewer dollars in general would be siphoned from taxpayers’ pockets to the demanders’ pockets.

Lone Star state officials are making some progress toward ending taxpayer-​funded tax-​grubbing. The state attorney general, Ken Paxton, has reached an agreement with several Texas school districts guilty of taxpayer-​funded campaigning against a school choice bill. They have agreed to institute safeguards to prevent themselves from doing it anymore. We’ll see.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott “has also had enough,” writes John Fund. Abbott is promoting a bill being considered in the legislature that would prevent cities, counties, and school districts from using tax dollars to hire lobbyists. Officials and teachers would still be able to talk to their representatives themselves.

“Texans are being taxed twice,” State Senator Paul Bettencourt, a supporter of the bill, explains, “once to fund local services and again to fund political lobbying they may not support.”

Yes, that’s the costly and corrupting problem all right. One that Texas is hardly alone in suffering but perhaps a ‘lone star’ in fighting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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subsidy

Non-​Billions for Non-Trains

California, train, high speed rail, waste, fraud, government spending, transportation

The federal government has officially stopped throwing money at California’s long-​in-​the-​non-​making “high-​speed” railroad. A scheduled-​but-​unspent $4 billion in federal subsidy has been canceled.

If the nonexistent project continues, money to fund non-​laying down of non-​tracks must come from other sources.

Non-​tracks? Yes. As Victoria Taft notes, “Not one foot of track” of the not-​in-​progress “high-​speed” railroad of the future has been glued into place. 

We were just getting to track-​laying phase, California Governor Newsom protests.

The going rate for snail-​pace non-​completion of nonexistent, not-​in-​progress railroads is $15 billion (says the Department of Transportation): the estimated amount of federal funding for California’s non-​project to date.

The total graft bin may have been even larger than that; who knows how many nickels for the non-​project have been collected from widows and orphans? But something like $15 billion is how much the federal government doled out over 16 years to ensure the railroad’s non-​construction. Projected total cost of California’s infinite-​prep-​phase railroad: $135 billion.

Why has it taken so long — six-​ish whole months — for the second Trump administration to get around to stoppering this particular gusher of monstrous waste of taxpayer dollars?

Perhaps proceeding as fast as they can, the cost-​cutters and fraud-​flayers take their mission one thing at a time. In Trump’s place, you might be tempted to chuck the whole five-​mile-​thick list of federal expenditures, throw it into the pyre and defund everything, re-​starting from scratch with the courts and military. But not all temptations play out in Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies subsidy

Propaganda Shoved Where?

PBS, NPR, public broadcasting, socialism, Democratic Party, propaganda, censorship

The continued existence of “public radio” and “public television” is out of place in these United States. Not because it’s partisan — all news vendors tend to toe some partisan line — but because it’s partisan and taxpayer subsidized.

Though NPR aficionados tend to downplay the subsidies to NPR and PBS, what public media boosters have more consistently done is deny the partisanship. 

They have no standing any longer — if the evidence of our senses weren’t enough. 

In “The Bell Finally Tolls for National Public Radio,” Matt Taibbi explains how the media behemoth’s CEO Katherine Maher admitted NPR’s and PBS’s partisanship in her defense of it.

That won’t help her case in Congress, though, notes Mr. Taibbi. 

While the New York Times insists that tax-​funded “public” media “improves the lives of millions of Americans” and “strengthens American interests” (presumably by being relentlessly progressive), it has no defense to Taibbi’s indictment: the branches of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have taken “the country’s signature public news shows into an endless partisan therapy session, a Nine Perfect Strangers retreat for high-​income audiences micro-​dosing on Marx and Kendi.”

Taibbi makes clear just how annoying the dish served by CPB/​NPR/​PBS is, the entities seeing no “problem with taking funds from a huge plurality or even a majority of citizens and pursuing a nakedly politicized, ear-​splitting propaganda project in opposition to the views of those people. NPR is the vegetables we refuse to eat, administered up a different entrance for our own good.”

I was thinking about the blight upon our eyes and ears and reason, but point taken.

De-​fund National Public Propaganda immediately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment subsidy

Newsom’s Terrifying “Antiterrorism”

Gavin Newsom, Islam, Mosque, funding, California,

Some of the worthiest allies in the fight against terrorism are the cheerleaders of terrorism. Make sense?

Makes sense to California Governor Gavin Newsom, apparently. This March he sent nearly $200,000 — on top of earlier grants — to the Islamic Center of San Diego. It’s part of a program to help religious institutions fight terrorism.

The Center is led by an imam who rationalized Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israeli civilians; no atrocity gave him pause. The Washington Free Beacon also reports on links between this mosque and the 9/​11 hijackers.

Newsom has awarded similar “antiterrorism” grants to other mosques demanding the demise of Jews and Israel.

Daily reports of Islam-​rationalized outrages and atrocities are aggregated by Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch. They aren’t rare.

Some regard “Islamophobia” — which, defined reasonably, means something like irrational hostility to Islam or to peaceful Muslims — as a worse threat than use of Islam to rationalize intimidation, repression, kidnapping, rape, murder. We do have reason to oppose the latter … and it is not any kind of “phobic,” contrary to the assertions of those who seek to blur important distinctions, because it is not irrational.*

People are responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others who belong to the same ethnic or religious group. 

But people are responsible for their own actions. 

It should go without saying that applauding the most vicious treatment of other human beings is not the kind of thing an American government should be encouraging.

By words.

Or cash.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Remember that the modern use of “phobia” hails from abnormal psychology, which is especially focused on needless fears. 

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media and media people national politics & policies subsidy

Trump vs. Big Bird

NPR, PBS, Big Bird, public television, public radio,

For decades, taxpayers have been forced to fund PBS and NPR, and with them any political tilts that we disagree with.

For decades, some lawmakers have nominally agreed that taxpayers should be liberated from this unchosen obligation.

But nothing has changed.

Now, however, President Trump has issued an executive order to simply end “Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.”

“Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies.…”

I say we have a right that our tax dollars not be used at all to fund public broadcasting. And that, also contrary to the text of the order, the government is not “entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.” 

It should have no authority to pay for any activities unrelated to the proper functions of government.

I will, however, accept the result of the executive order, defunding of public broadcasting. If we do get this result.

“The federal funding that supports Public Media,” PBS is alerting its viewers, “is at risk of being eliminated.” 

But this public media is also — and famously — supported by pledge drives and other non-​governmental funding sources.

Zero public funding doesn’t mean a world without Big Bird; an absence of subsidy does not mean an absence of the MacNeil Lehrer NewsHour — or its successor show, PBS News Hour. These and many other much-​loved shows might well thrive solely on voluntary funding.

“Now is a critical time to act,” urges PBS.

Yes. Tell Congress to ratify the elimination of federal funding of public media now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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budgets & spending cuts subsidy

Don’t Blame DOGE

Rocky Mountain Institute

Sometime during the Trump administration’s fast and furious spending cuts and cancellations, the Rocky Mountain Institute lost millions in Biden-​era federal climate-​nonsense grants — cut not by DOGE but by the Department of Energy under Secretary Chris Wright.

Tears have been shed, garments rent: $5.3 million would have been used to retrofit a building to make it more green; $1.5 million would have funded research on the practicality of “electric vehicle carshare programs” and the “resilience” and “equity” of U.S. business models.

These initiatives are just the tip of the spear. RMI is also a good buddy of the Chinese government. RMI even has an office in Beijing.

As James Roth puts it over at our sister publication StoptheCCP​.org, “Yes, RMI works with the communist government and proudly. It’s all over their website. It’s their specialty.”

Hold on, Roth. We must all try to understand that this is the kind of thing we must do if we wish to pretend to effectuate real global change in order to pretend to finetune world climate. If we let reality infect our thinking, what happens to mankind’s noble dream of instituting a globe-​girdling weather-​control machine while fatuously enabling the policies, conduct, and lies of tyrants? It would evaporate in the morning sun.

We’d be stuck with facts. 

We’d be stuck treating RMI as responsible for its actions, as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz did in a letter to the institute’s CEO in 2023, asking “whether RMI has ever received any funding from any entity or individual associated with the Chinese government. Please answer with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.…”

There’s at least one such funder. RMI has gotten money from Energy Foundation China, which has CCP ties and is “run by former Chinese Communist Party officials.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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