The Real Fraud

Here in Minnesota, we're constantly inundated with talk of fraud, fraud, fraud. That's Minnesota Republicans' favorite word, since they think they can beat Democrats over the head with it, including in our current race for the U.S. Senate and governor's office. They encourage national right-wing video propagandists to come here to chase random Somali people, assuming anyone who watches their material will believe that people who look East African must be committing fraud. 

A column by former U.S. attorney and now University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade called The "war on fraud" is targeting the wrong crimes (gift link to the Pioneer Press) gets at what drives me up the wall about all of that.

She describes J.D. Vance's Fraud Tracker task force, which will turn Department of Justice resources to crack down on small frauds. In the past, prosecutors could go after large-scale white collar crimes, which of course take longer to pursue and require more resources. Now, the attorneys have to carry at least 25 cases at a time: easy to do if there's only one count per case, but not very likely to allow for long-term, complex cases. 

McQuade says that during her 19 years as a federal prosecutor, for instance, SNAP fraud cases were treated as civil enforcement rather than criminal cases. The dollar amounts involved were in the thousands. Or her office would give the cases to state attorneys general or local DAs. That left her office the resources it needed to deal with cases that required wiretaps, national or international jurisdiction, and grand juries. To deal with, you know, corporations — where the real money was being stolen.

The Trump regime has also gotten rid of cryptocurrency enforcement, when the main use case for crypto is money laundering. They have have cut the DOJ workforce by 20,000. And, of course, Trump has famously pardoned or otherwise given clemency to more than 70 convicted fraudsters, so that tells us how seriously this regime takes fraud.

Two things McQuade lists that I had not heard about: the DOJ dismissed two cases against corporations that had been fully investigated and charged, one of which already had a plea and $1.1 billion fine agreed on. They just dismissed them. Never mind!

All of this tells corporations that they're free to do whatever they want, that "everyone is doing it." 

It's a weird thing, because in Minnesota, all of this corporate fraud gets no attention. (This MinnPost column by a progressive writer is the only thing I've seen that counters it, up until the PiPress reprinted McQuade's column. The Star Tribune constantly beats the fraud drum.) 

The heavy emphasis on fraud by immigrants in Minnesota clearly says it's not everyone doing it, and particularly not corporations... it's only those people. 

Letting the Shooter Go in Texas

Late yesterday, a Trump-appointed judge refused to force Texas Governor Greg Abbott to sign extradition papers for the ICE officer who shot through a door in North Minneapolis back in January, injuring one man and endangering children and other people in the house. 

As I wrote a few days ago, this is an ominous sign of our country's devolution. 

Abbott pretends he is "carefully considering" whether the shooter, Christian Castro, is legally to be considered a fugitive under the Constitution's extradition clause. The judge gave the supposed reasoning that 90 days was not enough for Abbott to figure that question out... even though Abbott said at a press conference that his real reasons are clearly based on animus against Minnesota.

It is established that Castro, the newly released shooter, has discussed moving to Mexico to be with a woman he's romantically involved with, so he's an obvious flight risk. Normally, I would say Minnesota has a better chance of extraditing him from Mexico than Texas, but I guess that has to involve the federal government, so probably not. 

I hope there's still a legal way to compel his return and overrule this stupid decision because unlike the current regime, I'm a fan of keeping this country intact and functional for the betterment of all.

It's Not the NYT's Job to Publish Press Releases for the Trump Regime

I don't subscribe to the New York Times, but I sometimes see their stories reprinted in my local newspapers. 

On Monday, the Pioneer Press reprinted Ana Swanson's coverage of how the U.S.-Canada tariff deal fell apart. The headline, deck, and first 14 paragraphs were a completely one-sided version from the U.S. trade rep's point of view.

In paragraph 15 (which came well after the jump), she wrote, "The Canadian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on [the trade rep's] description..." And then went on to give a vague descriptions of Prime Minister Mark Carney's criticism. 

By the time her story was written, I had read online what the Canadian criticisms were, so it seems likely the New York Times also knew. In paragraph 18, Swanson mentions that the U.S.

asked for concessions that would affect Canada's culture and maintenance of protections for the French language and demanded that Canada take out tariffs against non-U.S. trading partners...

Seems like more detail on those two things could have been offered to balance the 14 paragraphs that started the story.

Yesterday I heard a story on The Daily about how the talks fell apart, which was much more balanced and made clear what was being asked of the Canadians. 

Today, the Star Tribune carried a second New York Times story by Swanson and Matina Stevens-Gridneff, the voice heard on that Daily podcast. It shows just how shallow that first Swanson story was. 

The talks had been going well. Carney had even put a distasteful thing Trump wanted on the table for discussion (completing the Biden-canceled Keystone XL pipeline inside Canada). But then, as we know always happens with the Trump regime, "it was as if 'shadow figures were suddenly in the room' raising topics that had supposedly been settled in previous days." 

The story makes it clear that these late-developing topics and concessions, which the U.S. made clear were required for a successful outcome, were imposed on Canada. This is the opposite of what the first story had implied. Canadian sovereignty was very much on the line: Not only what languages it speaks, but its right to make trade agreements. 

In rushing to a scoop for the Monday story, Swanson misrepresented what happened and created propaganda for the Trump regime. The Pioneer Press helped by reprinting it. 

Whether most people will hear the Canadian side of things and understand that this is no different from any other bunch of lies the Trump regime tells, I cannot say. But we will all feel the effect of price increases if the tariffs happen. 

It's Always Fear

I don't write often enough about the scourge that is RFK Jr. So to make up for that, here's a recommended story called RFK Jr.'s Toxic World, about how he "uses fear of contamination to denigrate modern medicine and advance a project rooted in vulgar eugenics."

The writer has been diagnosed and is being treated for obsessive compulsive disorder, so he's coming at it from that perspective. I found that useful, as a person with an extremely low level of reaction to violations of the moral principal of sanctity (the spot where fear of contamination comes in). 

That means I find it hard to identify with any of the “precious bodily fluids” thinking that underlies anti-vax thinking. Reading someone who can explain the psychology from the inside and still come out on the rational side of things is very helpful.

Plus you get to read phrases like “recrudescent social Darwinism … a bootstrap mentality applied to the mind.” 

One World, One Ocean

Today I am avoiding the news by looking at this projection of the Earth that unifies the oceans instead of focusing on the land masses:

The BlueSky post where I saw it said:

Every map slices the ocean apart to keep the land whole. This one does the opposite: on the Spilhaus projection, every ocean on Earth is one connected body of water, with a year of real satellite-tracked currents flowing across it. Data: NASA OSCAR + NOAA OISST 

The original post, linked above, is a short GIF showing the color-correlated currents shifting over time.
 

A Pagoda with Heels

It's been a while since I wrote about the corporate paternalism of the Endicott Johnson shoe company. Rereading it today*, after these decades of increasing oligarchic retrenchment and tech-overlordism (and our current eugenicist government policy), I felt as though I was looking at another country, or maybe a different planet.

I was prompted to look at what I had written about EJ because of this post I saw on Facebook called Upstate New York Photos:

The historic EJ Workers Pagoda in C. Fred Johnson Park in Johnson City. Constructed in the 1910s as a pump house for EJ shoe factories. Now a restored folk art structure, it features glass, brick, and shoe heels embedded in its walls.

Shoe heels!

I don't think I've ever seen the pagoda in person. I've ridden on the many carousels in the parks in Endicott, Johnson City, and Binghamton, built for the enjoyment of EJ workers, though. 

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* Recommended!

Bumming Around a Bookstore

I've been wondering lately what my cortisol level is like, and admitting to myself that it's probably not good. Reading is an anesthetic. I don't know if it decreases stress in a general way, but it distracts… as long as I'm not reading books about aspects of our current problem.

With that in mind, I was at one of my favorite bookstores today looking for a new book I just heard about. In a way that book's subject is related to the problem, but I think it may be helpful anyway. Unfortunately, it was already sold out, so I had to put it on order.

While I was there, though, I saw this on the shelf:

You never know what you'll see in a bookstore. 

I didn't buy that book, but I've immortalized it in my photo collection.

I also found out there's a new book in Martha Wells's Murderbot series (score!), and I decided to get the final book in Colson Whitehead's Harlem trilogy, which came out this year. I already have the other two books but haven't read them yet. Now I can read them all in a row without having to wait.

So I should be set with more diversion from *all this* for a little while longer. 

No ICE Prison in Minnesota

Appleton, Minnesota, is fairly far west in the state, near the South Dakota border. 

In 1992, the city of about 1,500 built a 500-bed prison, hoping to attract some entity to fill it and create jobs. It was expanded twice, up to 1,600 beds, and was bought in 1997 by CoreCivic, one of the best-known private prison companies.

In 2010, CoreCivic closed the prison after the State of Minnesota had built its own prisons and began sending fewer prisoners. Then in 2023, our state legislature passed a bill banning private prisons. 

Now, the Department of Homeland Security has bought the moribund prison from CoreCivic (I'm sure for a nice profit, especially given its condition), and CoreCivic will get the contract to run the prison, too. Gee, that's great for the company! 

And who will be in the prison? ICE and CBP detainees, of course. 

While some people in Appleton were open to the idea of CoreCivic reopening its prison because it would bring back jobs, they are not as thrilled about the prison being sold to the feds, which takes it off the local tax rolls and deprives the city of 30% of its tax base, according to Minnesota Public Radio. 

Others in the community and the rest of the state are solidly against having an ICE prison in Minnesota, and against this end run around our state law.

Yesterday, two Republican state legislators who represent the area held a town hall in Appleton about the detention facility. (MPR story here.) One of them appeared to be saying he wants the state to step in and compensate Appleton for the lost property tax revenue. (Not!). 

He also made the type of apologist statement a local official might have made in a town near any concentration camp in Germany or Poland:

Anderson said he understands that people have strongly held views on the facility, but “they're not going to stop the national trend of detaining people and deporting folks that are not here legally. So you know, let's work together and make this a positive thing economically for Appleton, even if you don't agree with what's happening there.” 

Republicans. Vote them all out.

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h/t to Minneapolis Rep. Katie Jones, on BlueSky, for this.
 

Devolving

I watched the first five episodes of the ABC television show Designated Survivor back in fall 2016. Looking at its Wikipedia page, it appears my cessation coincided with the 2016 presidential election.

Those two dates may or may not have had a causal relationship. I remember being annoyed by the direction the plot was going, but Trump's election probably made the show seem trivial in comparison.

The reason I bring it up now is because its early episodes included a subplot about one of the states defying the federal government in the midst of the crisis that's the subject of the show (the Capitol was bombed during a State of the Union address, and all of the top leaders of the government were killed, with only the designated survivor remaining to become president). 

In that subplot, the governor of Michigan violates the civil rights of Muslims in his state, and the new president of the U.S. has to decide whether to enforce the Constitution in the face of what he sees as devolution or secessionist action. 

About three weeks before Trump was elected, the Designated Survivor president on T.V. ordered the fictional governor of Michigan arrested.

It was only a few months later that the first Trump administration tried to institute its Muslim ban. What a contrast!

And now in Trump 2, we have the almost totally normalized idea that the 14th Amendment doesn't mean what it plainly means and "mainstream" Republicans feel free to say that only Christians should be allowed to hold public office.

Yesterday's Pioneer Press ran two stories that spoke of this country's devolution. The first follows from many other examples of the Trump regime withholding tax dollars from disfavored states:



The other story may not be as well-known nationwide as it is here:


Texas Governor Greg Abbott is refusing to sign extradition papers for the ICE agent who shot a man through a door in Minneapolis in January, and lied about it. 

Even the feds acknowledge his actions were bad. Texas marshals took him in, and he's in a jail in Texas. But Abbott will not send him to Minnesota to stand trial, which is what the Constitution requires.

Both of the actions described in the news stories are signs of devolution, breakdown of the national compact. Lawsuits attempt to get money freed up from Trump's interference, and the mid-term elections may finally stop this illegal impoundment, if Democrats retake at least part of Congress. 

Right now Minnesota's attorney general is suing to get Abbott to sign the extradition under force of a court order. If a judge doesn't force him to do it, that will be an even more terrible sign. 

Media Escapism

I finished the three giant escapist fantasy books I was rereading and reading most recently, just in time for the brand new Cork O'Connor book from William Kent Krueger to come out. (I mentioned back in June that I was reading all 24 books in that series; I finished them a few weeks ago.)

Books are not enough to keep me from paying attention to all of the incredible stupidity and depressing dredge that passes for news in Donald Trump's America, but I'm trying to avoid it as much as possible. 

Oh, I also watched the eight-part dramedy series The Residence. It was fun. And did I mention Star City and Ponies? If you're interested in dramatized fiction of what it was like to live in Russia during the Cold War under constant surveillance, both of those short-season series have something to offer to us in our current moment. 

Quantifying the Effect of Slavery Today

No wonder the Right hates sociology and social psychology and tries to defund and destroy it.

A new study analyzed mortality rates in counties across the U.S. between 2010 and 2020, comparing them by what percent of the population was enslaved in 1860. The researchers found that the higher the percentage enslaved 150 years ago, the higher the mortality rate today, even though they controlled for the obvious confounding variables.

And get this:

The researchers also saw signs of ... “backsliding.” According to the new results, racial health disparities were slightly worse in the 2010s than in the 1970s, a trend that has also been found in other studies. Though his study doesn’t delve into why that might be, Galvan interprets the trend as reflecting the “largely temporary” reduction in health disparities during the civil rights era. “That momentum was lost,” he says, “in the 1990s and 2000s.” 

The link is from science.org, and worth reading in full.

Sinking to New Depths, As They Do

I had no interest in voting for Michele Tafoya in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, but if somehow I had, it would have been killed when she sat there and smiled during a Fox News interview as Larry Kudlow parroted Republicans' new line about Peggy Flanagan being a fake Indian, complete with references to Elizabeth Warren. (Other right-wing pundits and Republicans have rolled out Trump's "Pocahantas" label for Flanagan, though Kudlow did not.)

Flanagan, winner of the DFL primary in a runaway last week, is a citizen of the White Earth Nation in northern Minnesota. It is well-known in Minnesota that she's Native American. I'm sure even Tafoya — who is from California, having moved here 30 or so years ago — knows that.

The fact that Tafoya did not reject the interviewer's bullshit, and in fact smiled at his words so she could work them into her talking points, is unforgivable. 

I suppose I should point out that the Kudlow interview took place to clean up the blow-back after Tafoya had said it was "embarrassing" to be from Minnesota in an earlier Fox interview. That's just the kind of thing that gets a majority of voters to elect you in most states, right?