I know, I know. What’s the point of another test the Axis media is sure to flunk?
The Washington Free Beacon reported this week that an Inspector General audit of the Minority Business Development Agency’s flagship program found that 96 % of the reviewed transactions were improperly approved.
Wowsers.
The November 2025 audit reviewed $16 billion in transactions approved by the MBDA business center program, a network of federally funded consultancies, public and private, aimed at “supporting minority-owned businesses.” A business had to be at least 51% minority-owned to qualify for services: you can figure out how easy that requirement is to scam around. $15.4 billion of the $16 billion in transactions reviewed were “duplicate transactions, transactions with missing or inadequate documentation, and transactions that MBDA should not have approved based on the underlying activity.” One “minority-owned business” obtained a $33 million contract through the program without providing any paperwork to justify it.
President Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 killing the agency. Naturally a partisan federal judge blocked the EO, so the administration fired all its employees in October because another federal judge in March 2024 had ruled that basis of the agency’s mission was unconstitutional and that it was illegal to use race or ethnicity to determine what businesses deserved grants. The Biden administration ignored that ruling.
Did you know that President Trump, that fascist, has ignored court orders?
The audit began under the Biden administration, so it can’t be discredited as a partisan exercise. It did only look at ten of the 40 business centers funded by the agency before the Trump administration ended it last year, and it only chose only those centers with a documented history of bookkeeping irregularities.
Ethics Alarms 
“The report does not prove that any fraud occurred, but found there were no safeguards in place to prevent it, making massive fraud likely. It also notes that an Inspector General audit in 2017 had found “similar” issues with record-keeping and self-attestation, and that “many of the issues remain[ed]” almost a decade later.”
So people have to self-attest about minority status in order for their business to be considered for government contracts. Here is where all these discriminatory practices corrode ethics: people resent being discriminated against on the basis of immutable characteristics like race. So some people will resort to misrepresenting their race in order to beat the discrimination, without feeling any guilt but feeling justified in order to beat discrimination on race (which is the greater wrong).
This is similar to “passing” in the 1950s where a person with a black grandparent tried to pass as white in order to be eligible to buy property in a restricted neighborhood, or to beat other instances of discrimination in the times of Jim Crow. I have seen TV shows where this practice of “passing” is presented as the right and logical thing to do.
Two wrongs do not make a right. However not all wrongs are equal. The bigger wrong is discrimination mandated by law. As soon as that disappears the dishonesty problem in checking those boxes on race will dissappear.
NOTE: when I first saw those checkboxes where I was asked to specify my race I was culture shocked. In the Netherlands such is unthinkable as the only time in history were questions about ethnicity had to be answered was during WWII as the Nazis wanted to use this to exclude Jews from society.
“So some people will resort to misrepresenting their race in order to beat the discrimination“
Rachel Dolezal, “Tin Lizzie” Warren, Ward Churchill, Hilaria Baldwin, Shaun King, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jessica Krug, et al, would like a word…..
PWS
The all-time champ was Carol Channing of “Hello Dolly” fame. She didn’t reveal she was black (by most standards) until near the end of her life and after she had retired as a performer. Her paternal grandmother was black and her father was considered black as a result. But Channing was light-skinned, and “passed.” Once she told the story, it seemed obvious. She sounded and looked black beneath t that blonde wig.
The One Drop Rule has certainly…um…evolved.
PWS
In the Antebellum era “passing” for white occurred in order to escape slavery.
During the Jim Crow era “passing” occurred in order to a) bypass anti-miscegenation laws that prevented white people to marry people who legally qualified as black following the “one drop” rule. b) to avoid discrimination in housing, employment, and travel (hotels, restaurants).
As slavery and Jim Crow were ethically abhorrent, I have no negative opinions about efforts to escape the effect of those who tried to escape this discrimination by passing. However there are many black people who viewed the practice negatively as it was a denial of black identity.
Given this history I have some sympathy for people who try to escape modern day discrimination in business by passing as a minority, in effect reversing the tilt created by discriminatory laws. The misrepresentation of race proves the corrupt nature of these laws.
I have no sympathy for Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, who never gave an indication that she was against these type of laws (and I include affirmative action here), but cynically invented a Cherokee ancestry as she thought she could benefit from that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_(racial_identity)
Does anyone wonder why the rate of women owned businesses starts grew exponentially over the last 20 years. Name your wife as 51% owner in your business and voila you are now a minority owned firm. In other cases, a non minority owned firm partners with a real minority owned firm that is just a contracting vehicle and you are now eligible for set asides. All these programs encourage gamesmanship.