The New York Times has a relatively fair explication of the astounding Somali scam in Minnesota, a perfect storm of the state allowing a “Somali diaspora” to become established there, too many products of a terrible culture, an intellectually lazy, woke culture in Minnsesota presided over by a knucklehead governor (Tim Walz, naturally), and an irresponsible immigration policy.

Best quotes:

1) “Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud 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.”

2) “Minnesota’s fraud scandal stood out even in the context of rampant theft during the pandemic, when Americans stole tens of billions through unemployment benefits, business loans and other forms of aid, according to federal auditors.” [See how the Times tries to use an “Everybody does it!” framing to minimize focus on the Somalis?] 3) “Many Somali Americans in Minnesota say the fraud has damaged the reputation of their entire community, around 80,000 people, at a moment when their political and economic standing was on the rise.” [ Gee, they figured that out, did they?]

4) “Kayseh Magan, a Somali American who formerly worked as a fraud investigator for the Minnesota attorney general’s office, said elected officials in the state — and particularly those who were part of the state’s Democratic-led administration — were reluctant to take more assertive action in response to allegations in the Somali community.” […because it was a reliable voting bloc for Democrats.]

5) “As a trial in the meals fraud case was coming to a close last summer, an attempt to bribe a juror included an explicit insinuation about racism, prosecutors said. Several defendants in the trial were found to have arranged to send a bag containing $120,000 to a juror along with a note that read, ‘Why, why, why is it always people of color and immigrants prosecuted for the fault of other people?'” [Always the same playbook…]

6) “Dr. Samatar said that Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread. Minnesota, he said, proved susceptible to rampant fraud because it is “so tolerant, so open and so geared toward keeping an eye on the weak.”

Here is A M Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, “No, Calling Out Somali-Americans For Their Unethical Conduct Isn’t ‘Racist’”…

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If anyone in this country is familiar with, much less understands, the idea of the social contract, that person would probably agree that importing large numbers of people from a culture that rejects such a contract is a bad idea.

There is the individual social contract, in which persons sublimate some of their yens in order to live in a people society with other persons doing the same. Then there are cultural contracts in which groups sublimate some of their own yens to live among other differing groups.

Sadly, knowledge of Enlightenment philosophers is nearly as dead as knowledge of the Founding Fathers who based many of their ideas about our country on those philosophers.

That’s where the poor education in Western Civilization has brought us. The idea that we are solely a corrupt, white, Christian patriarchal society that routinely oppresses and that all we need is a little color and spice in our lives to fix things has driven this attempt to tribalize communities in the name of diversity. The result has been the importation of cultures that have no intention of assimilating and have zero respect for American values, such as Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press or Freedom of Association (except where they can use those values to further their own tribal interests), seemingly interested only in profiting economically off of our largess while slowly turning our country into the ones from which they fled.

Obviously, there is a difference between generalizing all Somalis as grifters and pointing out that the culture as a whole has not benefited and has rather suffered by the arrival of a large group of unassimilated people who see us only as the Golden Goose.

When did it stop being acceptable to call a duck a duck?