You may have never heard the phrase “Minnesota nice” probably because you’ve never had to, but in the context of what has unraveled in that US state, its meaning is important.
“Minnesota nice” describes the generally pleasant, polite attitudes of the state’s citizenry. Of all American states, it is said to be one of the warmest and most welcoming. But it also includes an aversion to confrontation or hostility; people there are said not to like combativeness – which makes it arguably one of the worst places for encounters with immigration officials to spark, and one of the most ideal venues in the world to establish sets of scams.
That’s what members of the state’s Somali community – numbering less than 110,000 – have done. Federal investigations have now uncovered significant fraud involving the state’s obscenely generous welfare apparatus, leading to over 98 charges and around 60 convictions, with estimated losses exceeding $1 billion and potentially up to $9 billion in Medicaid services.
The largest scam was revealed in December as the Feeding Our Future scandal, where defendants stole $250 million from federal child nutrition funds during covid by creating fake meal sites, inflating claims and ghost invoicing. Most of the 78 indicted are Somali-American, with 57 convicted so far.
Feeding our Future was followed by revelations involving autism therapy fraud. Here, Medicaid was invoiced for unprovided services to children with autism spectrum disorder, using unqualified staff (relatives) and paying kickbacks to parents. Recent child care probes, sparked by viral videos alleging $100 million+ in daycare fraud, involve claims of ghost centers and misappropriated funds, leading to funding freezes.
Then there are the tangential reports. Remittances amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars landing in accounts in Somalia. Border guards questioning Somali women at airports for carrying suitcases crammed with dollars. The shameless excuses of those fingered in the independent reporting.
Put together, this makes Minnesota less of an affable state than it does a crime scene.
Minnesota is blue and run by failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz. Its most populous city, Minneapolis, is run by Jacob Frey, also a democrat, who openly wept before the coffin of George Floyd in 2020. Despite the initial denials that crowded the response to the charges of wholesale fraud, it is likely both men – and many other state and council officials – knew of the scams. And hushed them up.
This behaviour isn’t new. In the UK, thousands of young rape and exploitation victims, the majority of whom are working class white, have been denied justice by men and women – also white – who think like Frey and Walz. The Charities Commission comes down hard on those who flout legislation, but seems to make an exception for mosques where anti-Semitic statements are expressed. Similarly, electoral fraud should technically ensure the end of a politician’s career, but not if you’re Lufthur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, whose indiscretions barred him from office once, but who happily returned to the city hall five years after the fact.
Liberal or establishment apologists for fraud in Minnesota, or rape gangs in the UK, believe the end justifies the means: to them, the move toward an inclusive society requires anti-septic, included in which are teething implications. Ultimately everyone will be integrated and pay their taxes.
Whilst there is merit in rehabilitation, and plenty of examples to reference, the integration of the Somali community in America (and elsewhere) is more complicated – chiefly on inherited cultural grounds, where ideas of inherent clan structures as governance features are preferred over the peripatetic democracy America practises with its multiple state and federal elections. Earlier in the year Frey’s own position in Minneapolis was challenged by a Somali American member of the Minneapolis Senate, who was explicit in his criticism of the incumbent, and made it clear that, for all the platitudes and pandering of white liberals, the Somali community wanted power in its own image.
The rehabilitation of criminals and social engineering’s teething implications are left to themselves to resolve, with neither concept being universally popular. But beyond them lies what white liberal leaders have become. That poses one of the world’s great problems – one from which there is no coming back.
It involves obfuscation, dereliction of sworn duty, the intolerance of criticism, deflection, undermining transparency and running cover for crooks – all staged theatrically as though certain communities are under siege by fascists – meanwhile convictions are mounting in the courts.
If this is what white liberal leaders have become, and all the evidence suggests so, then we are talking more about suicidal over-compensation than anti-septic in which they have lost themselves, humiliated themselves in, taken councils and projects and good faith down with them, turned into compulsive liars all the while continuing to sneer virtue.
The most awesome aspect of Minnesota’s fraud scandals has been the response of the Somali community, whose leaders have openly insulted both Walz and Frey – men who’ve spent much of their recent careers kneeling before them. That spectacle – of investing so much groveling only to end up being slighted or jeered – coupled with being ripped off handsomely, could possibly result in Minnesotans rejecting the niceness they’re famous for in exchange for a more assertive attitude in future.
[image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minneapolis_skyline_from_Loring_Park_neighborhood_aerial,_October_2024.jpg]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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