Comment by refulgentis
20 days ago
The operator overlap is real, and the correction that FoF is a non-profit rather than a federal program is fair. I'll take both points.
But look at what's happened across this exchange:
Essay: Industrial-scale CCAP fraud is "beyond intellectually serious dispute." The evidence: the OLA report shows investigators believed 50%+ of reimbursements were fraudulent.
When challenged that the OLA explicitly could not substantiate $100M and proven fraud was $5-6M: you retreat to "my citation that investigators believed this is absolutely true and is in the report as claimed."
When challenged that "investigators believed X" ≠ "X is beyond intellectually serious dispute" — especially when the same report documents the IG saying "I do not trust the allegation," DHS leadership calling $100M "not credible," investigators having "varying levels of certainty" with some having "not enough experience to have an opinion," and the OLA itself saying "we cannot offer a reliable estimate": you pivot to FoF operator overlap.
You still haven't addressed the actual critique. The overlap proves that some fraudsters work across programs. Not disputed, not surprising, and consistent with your essay's point about fraud lifecycles. What it doesn't do is retroactively substantiate Swanson's 50% CCAP figure. His methodology, spelled out in the very email the OLA appended, counted all payments to any center where children were poorly supervised as 100% fraudulent, a standard he himself distinguished from "the kind of proof needed in a criminal or administrative proceeding." FoF fraud was fabricating meal claims for meals never served. CCAP fraud is billing for children not present. Different programs, different billing mechanisms, different oversight bodies (MDE vs. DHS), different proven scales by orders of magnitude. That some of the same people ran both doesn't collapse the distinction.
"CCAP is also funded by federal block funding" seems designed to blur a line that matters. Many programs are federally funded. That doesn't make convictions in one program evidence of the fraud rate in another.
Here's what's frustrating: I think the essay's core argument is genuinely strong, and it doesn't need the overclaim. The OLA report is already damning on its own honest terms: proven fraud of $5-6M in a program with paper sign-in sheets prosecutors called "almost comical," no electronic attendance verification, 60-day billing windows, a certification statement removed from billing forms in 2013, and the investigators themselves saying centers "open faster than they can close the existing ones down." The report makes it clear fraud was likely substantially higher than proven convictions. That's already a devastating indictment of program oversight. Your argument about base rates, weak controls, and Shirley fishing in a troubled pond all follows from that, from the report as it actually reads.
But "likely substantially higher than $5-6M, in a program with terrible controls" is a very different claim than "50%+ fraud, beyond intellectually serious dispute." Your essay presents the latter. The report supports the former. And the gap matters, because the essay is being read right now, today. in a context where the president is calling Somalis "garbage," prosecutors are throwing out $9 billion estimates in press conferences, and five states just had billions in child care funding frozen. Overstating what the evidence supports isn't a minor rhetorical choice in that environment. It's exactly the kind of epistemic failure the essay warns about when it talks about "irresponsible demagogues" filling the vacuum.
The thing which is beyond intellectually serious dispute is industrial-scaled fraud.
You keep wanting to make me "own" the CCAP's estimate. I will not reciprocally try to make you "own" $5 million, because I am charitable and because history has been unkind to the officials who made it.
I do ask you to own: "Minnesota HAS NOT suffered industrial-scale fraud across several social programs." Otherwise this is judging a high school debate competition, and I've had better.
Of course Minnesota has suffered industrial-scale fraud. FoF alone clears that bar. I've never said otherwise.
But your essay doesn't just claim fraud exists: it presents the 50% figure as the evidence that "staggers the imagination" and makes the case "beyond intellectually serious dispute." That's not parenthetical color. The paragraph is load-bearing on that number.
You charitably won't make me own $5M. I never claimed it. I've said in every reply the real number is likely substantially higher. My point has been the same throughout: you presented a disputed estimate as settled, from a report that explicitly could not settle it - in which the IG rejected it, DHS leadership called it not credible, the OLA said it "cannot offer a reliable estimate.", and the source themself named their lack of a standard beyond a vibe.
The essay is 5,000 words on why epistemic standards matter in fraud investigation. The critique is the essay's own standard, applied to the essay. You should apologize for the high school debate comment.
The essay reads to me as 5000 words on why epistemic standards should be lowered for effective fraud investigation. Requiring retrospective evidence - the highest epistemic standard - is too slow and expensive, so the government needs to copy the private sector's epistemic standards where a collection of solid heuristics and smart observations is sufficient to preemptively block payment.
It's an insightful point, but it seems consistent with those epistemic standards that it's unimportant whether the 50% figure is valid in retrospect. The observation of "industrial-scale fraud" is sufficient to act, it doesn't need a retrospectively validated 50% figure and he would like you to get all the way off his back about it.
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This is genuinely pathetic, Patrick. You want to say it so bad but can’t!
No notes on the fraudsters pardoned by this current admin of course.
Fraudsters pardoned by the current administration don't make public service and welfare fraud in Minnesota any less grave or important, and it's super weird that people across this thread keep implying otherwise.
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The political sidecars attached are unnecessary.