I’ve been hearing about corruption in Minnesota for many years. The short summary, since I’ve been regularly seeing articles about it in our newspapers since at least the start of the COVID pandemic, is that the state exercised poor regulatory oversight of charitable foundations, and some bad actors moved in to exploit that. The problem exploded during COVID as state and federal services were expanded to cope with the social disruption caused by the disease, and a few people figured out that founding phony charities was a good strategy for siphoning off tax dollars…a lot of tax dollars.
Honestly, I was tuning out all the news about the Feeding Our Future scam back in 2020, because it was all about the state slowly stamping out all the scammers. We’ve had a steady throb of stories in this state about crooks getting arrested for lying about these fake charities, slowly getting prosecuted, and typically getting convicted — the justice system grinds slowly, especially when hundreds of millions of dollars are involved, and while many have been convicted, even today most of them haven’t been sentenced. When your local news is a steady drip of incremental stories about infamous con artists getting court dates, it’s hard to sustain focus. It’s been a slow cleanup of a ghastly mess, where frauds were claiming to set up meal delivery for schools, getting paid by the state, and then not actually delivering anything.
Except now it’s blowing up again because Republicans have discovered a racist angle to it. A lot of the schools not-served by these services were in poor Somali communities, with the complicity of Somali con artists, because as usual poor people are ripe for the picking with promises of free money. So now there’s a story Republicans can seize upon: poor black people were stealing our money! Never mind that state officials were aware of the problem and have been trying to do cleanup and improve regulatory oversight for over a decade and that it’s not just a Somali problem.
For instance, here’s the organizer of the scheme, Aimee Bock:
Whoops. I guess we’re going to have to round up all the white women and deport them. Just can’t trust ’em.
Keep in mind that Minnesota has a population of 80,000 people of Somali descent. Something like 80 were involved in the crime, so sure, indicting over 3 million white women in the state because Aimee Bock stole millions of dollars seems fair.
For a more thorough overview of the scheme, here’s a fast-talking white woman to compress the whole convoluted mess into 24 minutes.
One of the more crazy accusations coming out of the demented Right is the claim that the Minnesota state flag, which is blue and has a star on it, was designed to resemble the Somali flag, which is blue and has a star on it. You be the judge.
well, i am convinced by the flag comparison:
-they are both rectangular with the same aspect ratio
-they both reflect light in the blue range of the electromagnetic spectrum at what looks to be 461, 474 and 483 nm
-if you add up 461+474+483 you get 1418 which is how many billions of dollars trump says was stolen, within a factor of about 1000, which can’t be coincidence
slam dunk libtards!
So, rich thieves are angry that poorer thieves stole the money they were planning on stealing?
The fascists are targeting poor black immigrant populations!? I’m shocked, shocked that they are attempting to demonize all Somalian immigrants as criminal fraudsters. Nevermind that the 8 Somalians were victimizing hundreds of other Somalians by stealing their identities in order to steal public funds, the only information necessary to condemn an entire community is their race, and immigration history. /s
I really wish the star on the new State flag was a proper compass rose, which represents Minnesotas nickname of the North Star State. That eight pointed thing is just confusing.
For an even faster explanation of the Somalia targeting by the asshole administration, here is Amanda’s mild take.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/ZTdoBKbfGM4
The demographic committing the most crimes? White men. I think we should round them up and deport them to Aldebaran.
In my opinion, the flag of Minnesota (and the flag of Somalia) are simple and beautiful.
But im a bit partial, because i love blue flags with stars.
This happened everywhere in just about every state.
The other Covid-19 era scams were by corporations and businesses. They exploited the programs meant to keep businesses from failing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Here is one example from…Florida.
FWIW, Trump was president during this time.
You made a mistake, PZ. You showed the same flag twice.
Yes, that seems like a much more urgent problem than the fact that poor Somali schoolchildren were not being fed that whole time.
Hypothesis:
The incidence of fraud is fairly uniform, at least over time. The instance of detecting and exposing it is not.
The latter is related to, in general, the governmental motivation to go after white-collar crime as a whole. There’s substantial historical and contemporary evidence that more authoritarian, and (more generally) more establishment-controlled, governments are — how to put this politely? or at least appropriate for this forum? — less enthusiastic about enforcement of white-collar-crime provisions against private actors and more prone to conflicts of interest among themselves. Conversely, there’s also substantial evidence that when any outsider group has a member prominently accused of a widespread fraud scheme, both they individually and their outsider group will be treated (at least in public) more harshly than “upstanding citizens” of the majority/default group. Further, those majority/default groups are more successful in getting activities that they control excluded from scrutiny, even when they would otherwise be considered fraudulent.
No string of citations, just a couple examples:
• Do you really think Enron was the only organization engaged in energy-market manipulation?
• Chicago. For, like, the entire period since the Fire.
• Virtually the entire defense-intelligence-industrial complex, for the entire history of the nation (don’t look too closely at where the majority of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s fortune came from…)
@6 raven
Yes indeed. The fascists are emphasizing the Minnesota connection because they are trying to smear Walz. Here are some cases from Texas.
6 Sentenced for Roles in $20M COVID-19 Relief Fraud Ring
Two convicted in Eastern District of Texas COVID fraud scheme
Co-Founder of Paycheck Protection Program Lender Service Provider Sentenced for $65M COVID-19 Relief Fraud Scheme
The Texas flag has one star on it, like the flags of Cuba, Vietnam and Chile. Be sure to check out the Cuban naval jack.
I suspect communists.
Bonnie Blue flag
That sounds much closer to the Somalian flag than Minnesota’s.
Also, look into the De Zavala flag.
@ ^ Reginald Selkirk : Checked wikipedia and found this Lorenzo de Zavala but no flag. is this the one you had in mind?
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_de_Zavala
So he helped write the constituitions of Mexico and Texas? Now that’s an impressive TexMex mix! ;-)
[Heh. I see linguistic supremacy at work]
StevoR, I know it’s normally , but from your adduced link:
(1) Born in Yucatán under Spanish rule, he was closely involved in drafting the constitution for the First Federal Republic of Mexico in 1824; and
(2) In March 1836, a meeting of delegates was held in a Texas settlement known as “Washington-on-the-Brazos” where the Declaration of Independence for the Republic of Texas was drafted and signed.[19] Zavala personally helped write the new constitution and served as vice president under the provisional government.
Sequence is clear.
It should be MexTex.
Linguistic primogeniture is being overwritten by hegemonic framing, is what I reckon.
—
Hint: Russia:Crimea::USA:Mexico back in the day? Too fanciful?
Both Tejas and Mexico are Spanish words derived from words of the native residents of those regions. The 1600s primogeniture rather predates Texas declaring its independence from Mexico, plus it’s easier to say Tex-Mex than the reverse.
The first time Russia annexed Crimea, it was known as Taurida. https://www.rferl.org/amp/crimea-russia-renaming-taurida/26806157.html
“…. plus it’s easier to say Tex-Mex than the reverse.”
That’s the way of habituation, Tethys.
Also, it was a double level drollery: I put (1) and (2) with dates for a reason.
Yes, it was ostensibly a linguistic point. And idiosyncratic to me.
You missed the actual point; USA invaded and took over Texas on the very same basis as Ruzzia now invades Ukraine.
(Too oblique, I am sometimes)
“The 1600s primogeniture rather predates Texas declaring its independence from Mexico”
Well, yes. Also, 2013 predates Crimea doing the same re Ruzzia.
I’m afraid that the comparison to Russia invading Ukraine (and the four-plus centuries of struggle over Crimea) is inapt. The US was already engaged in hostilities with Spain; Spain had invaded first (by not keeping to eighteenth-century-treaty borders, which were themselves probably illegitimate in origin as both “sides” were invaders of indigenous lands); and international law in the early 19th century was nowhere near clear about what constituted an “invasion” absent formal organized armies. (It still isn’t… but it’s less-murky-enough to call what happened around Texas in the nineteenth century an insurrection, not an invasion.)
Don’t apply twenty-first-century standards for international relations to nineteenth-century conduct without stopping first to ensure that it makes sense. In this instance, it doesn’t. (And that’s leaving aside who was invading whom in the centuries-long struggle to “define” boundaries of the Duchy of Muscovy and its successors, too.)
@John
Point is that the name Texas is the same age and hegemony as the name Mexico, so primogeniture is a pointless digression.
FWIW Rebecca Watson has this new clip – Somali Americans are Good, Actually lasting 8 minutes.
“The US was already engaged in hostilities with Spain; Spain had invaded first (by not keeping to eighteenth-century-treaty borders, which were themselves probably illegitimate in origin as both “sides” were invaders of indigenous lands); and international law in the early 19th century was nowhere near clear about what constituted an “invasion” absent formal organized armies.”
Heh. Either way, that territory once belonged to Mexico. But no more.
I did check Wikipedia:
But sure. Most inapt. Entirely different, really.
—
Nope.
Again:
If you mean the names themselves, then Mexico is attested in C16 and Texas from late C17.
Fact.
So, no, not irrelevant. First was Mexico, then was Texas.
(How that is irrelevant to primogeniture is left to the imagination)
@12
A simple Google Images search for “de zavala flag” turns up plenty, including this:
picture
Pales next to PPP fraud. 90% of $800B in “loans” never paid back, and 80% went into pockets of owners and shareholders, not workers.
What an odd sense of hegemony.
So the names only count once Spanish conquistadores wrote/ used them wrongly? The Caddo culture and their word ‘Tejas’ long predate the arrival of Cristobo, as does the culture and people who coined the word Teotihuaca.
It’s irrelevant to the thread (what, John Morales is derailing yet another thread with pointless personal tangents!?), besides being factually incorrect.
Heh. My drollery is oft wasted, Tethys.
Linguistically primogeniture → first born.
You see the elements in the term?
It conceptually refers to “right of the first‑born”, so it works at more than one level.
(It’s a linguistic pun, too. I operate on more than one register)
—
“It’s irrelevant to the thread (what, John Morales is derailing yet another thread with pointless personal tangents!?)”
I made one (1) comment. After that, it was 1:1 to responses to it.
So, if derail was there, it was not I that caused it. Participated, but not cause.
(I can’t respond to non-responses, see?)
@20. Reginald Selkirk : “A simple Google Images search for “de zavala flag” turns up plenty, including this:
picture.” Ah. Thanks for that.
@19. John Morales : FWIW I used TexMex because that’s I gathered it was called & on checking :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex-Mex
Just an allusion to that with Lorenzo de Zavala. Intresting etymology and disciussion of how it maybe could be and guess there’s a case in that specific Zavala example that you could put it the other way round but its not what people use.* Too Cap’n Obvs?
I wonder if Mexico would even want Texas back now? Then there’s the historical irony of complaining about Mexicans and Hispanic people living in what used to be their own land, taker oevr their country then complain that their people live there, yeesh! Anyhow.
.***
People who don’t know the difference between entomology and etymology bug me in ways I can’t put into words. – Old joke.
“FWIW I used TexMex because that’s I gathered it was called & on checking :”
Duh.
Linguistic pun, your own timeline about the SAME bloke signing in order.
Maybe try re-reading my #13.
Pure drollishness, totally missed, and you try to explain the obvious to me?
Linguistic/temporal sequence.
MexTex vs TexMex.
It’s a little bit of banter.
Are you seriously wondering? Because, duh.
[Tutorial for ya, StevoR]
*** is easy.
See, this site implements a subset of markdown as well as markup.
The asterisk therefore is assigned various roles, but of course one can escape.
The escape character for markdown is \ whereas for markup it is &.
So. If you want asterisks or whatever, or if you find some such glitch, just do that.
In this case,
\\* → *[OT]
\* → * is what I wanted, but that’s another prob (I did not preview either); I know what happened, which was that markdown does not cascade.
Alas, ` (backtick) is the markdown for an inline code tag, monospaced and red here and I put that in.
On review, I can see how someone may be confused at my over-terse summation, so to be clear, what I mean to convey is that if you input “`\*” it will display “*”.
Of course, one could just use Unicode or HTML entities, but the point of markdown is that it is easy.
(BTW, > is the markdown for blockquote, but it closes on the first linebreak)