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The Somalis have taught us a lesson we should have learned long ago.
The first humanitarian instinct when confronted with poverty is to give the poor some food, shelter, or money. Government, however, cannot operate that way. It must first establish official criteria by which to measure poverty. It must then establish a bureaucracy to undertake the task of determining who does or does not meet the criteria. Third, it must create an official feedback loop so that government can rapidly learn when, or if, the individual escapes poverty.
Doing the above is not terribly efficient, but government’s gotta do what government’s gotta do. This is Stage One.
Stage Two begins when government notices that many people in poverty are poor for one or more reasons. The second instinct is to intervene with the intent of helping the person overcome the reason(s). Thus, the occupation of Social Worker is born.
In the beginning, social workers are idealistic, caring, people. Over the years, however, idealism erodes and social workers become more like normal people. They join unions and become preoccupied with their own salaries, benefits, and pensions. They also become focused on job security. A client who becomes dependent on their services is not necessarily a bad outcome.
Stage Three starts when politicians become aware that constituents really dislike the size of government and the cost of its employees. Politicians also notice how cumbersome and inflexible government bureaucracy is. The solution is something known as an NGO — a non-profit non-governmental organization. In theory, an NGO is filled with altruistic do-gooders dedicated to service. They are do-gooders without unions who will work cheaply, quickly, and efficiently. The term “non-profit” instantly bestows upon them a halo of trust.
To recap: Stage One: give money to the poor. Stage Two: hire government employees to provide services to the poor. Stage Three: give money to non-governmental, non-profit organizations to manage services to the poor.
DOGE performed a public service by exposing the extent of the NGO universe and how dependent NGOs were on government grants and contracts. DOGE also exposed that NGOs are removed from oversight. They receive government grants for a particular purpose, but the government rarely follows up to ensure the money is well spent. Finally, DOGE exposed the incestuous relationship between many NGOs and the Democratic Party.
Enter the Somalis. Every Somali day care center is an NGO. Every Somali soup kitchen is an NGO. Every Somali Autism Center is an NGO. All are “non-profit.” All were given the halo of trust, and all were total frauds. Minnesota Somalis have taught us all a lesson. Do not trust Somalis is NOT the lesson. The lesson is not to trust anyone.
If you are a government passing out taxpayer money, NO ONE is entitled to a halo of trust. If you give money to someone based solely on their promise to use it to help the poor, you are a sucker. If you do this year after year without audits, you are a stupid sucker.
Government does not trust its own employees. Every governmental office has policies in place to prevent and/or rapidly detect employee theft. These employees were all vetted before getting hired. Many of them have many years of conscientious service and honesty. Are those employees trusted not to steal? No, no, they are not. Those employees are subject to the same anti-theft policies as everyone else. Not a single government employee is granted a long leash.
It is time to reconsider the pros and cons of Stage Three. If something really needs doing, why not have a government employee do it? If the government doesn’t think the job is important enough to have employees do it, maybe the government shouldn’t do it at all. Government bureaucracies are expensive, but they don’t steal.
In 2026, billions and billions worth of fraud cases are likely to be discovered. All of those billions will be Stage Three expenditures.
G-Pub
PS: Lockheed Corporation and local trash collectors are not NGO’s. They are “for-profit” government contractors. After decades of faithful service, do they receive a halo of trust? No, no, they do not. Many a government employee spends their entire career seeking to prevent and/or detect fraud committed by government contractors.
Minnesota has such employees. When it came to Somalis, Governor Walz told such employees to stand down.
Discussion (11)
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Good post. Although, if we're sorting people and groups on a scale of trustworthiness the people we should most distrust to the point of avoidance (i.e. don't let them in) are the Somalis and all other 3rd world tribal peoples who will bring their tribal culture and behavior with them to a much wealthier society and soak the suckers of that society for all they're worth.
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I think your post is worthy but I note that it is missing any discussion of two areas that essentially provide forms of mitigation in dealing with issues related to the interaction of poverty and governance; those are religion and, in the case of Americans, our founding principles. Both of these have been abandoned in the case of the conditions faced in Minnesota and other location involving fraud by Somalis and we see the same behavior by others taking advantage of misplaced government largesse.
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That's the problem.
Remove government largesse---that is, the distribution of money extracted involuntarily from taxpayers or borrowed (also involuntarily) from future taxpayers ---and the laudable charitable impulse will be perforce be restrained not by selfishness or indifference but by the reasonable expectation on the part of voluntary donors that their money will be used wisely and that the problem the charity exists to solve will, indeed, be solved.
When a religious body is in charge of the operation, there may be additional constraints, but saintliness isn't common enough to support consistent resistance to the built-in incentives towards corruption described in the OP.
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There is a simple equation here. Don't bring people into your country who do not share your culture. Americans have an incredibly diverse culture that extend across all of the various European and many Asian cultures. Remarkably the immigrants from so many of these countries come here and integrate well. They become business people and laborers. They buy home eventually and raise their children blending the culture of their homelands with that of their new home. Not so much with Muslims whose religion-political system possesses an arrogance and certainty of its own primacy in the world that rather than seek to join the new country's culture they strive to bring the new country inline with their religious views.
I am currently reading Andy McCarthy's magnum opus, The Grand Jihad. What Andy is striving to do is wake up Americans to the threat of the Muslim invasion. It is relatively small at this point. At the time of the writing which was during the latter part of the Obama administration Muslims made up about .06% of the American population. They claimed at the time to have as many as 10 million of their adherents here, but Andy says it was likely closer to 3 million. However, this is a hardcore, one that forms enclaves that are essentially impenetrable. At the same time, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood centered in Egypt, Qatar, and other Arab states have worked tirelessly for nearly 50 years to corrupt our universities. We saw the effects of this following the October 7th, 2023 invasion of Israel from Gaza. What had been a relatively innocuous presence on campuses across the country bloomed into a major presence everywhere. These are not people who are Americanizing or in anyway accepting the Judeo-Christian traditions of our constitutional form of government.
For a Muslim there is only one source of truth The Koran. There is only one system of laws, Sharia. Sharia allows Muslims to ignore the rules and laws of other cultures since in their belief system such laws are not Islamic and, therefore, inferior. They hav one goal, whether they are extremists or so-called moderates, that goal is the establishment of Sharia throughout the world. Whether you become a Muslim or not, is irrelevant. You can be a Christian or even a Jew, but then you are subject to dhimminitude, and inferior status outside of the Umma, the Muslim family. One way or the other, the goal is Sharia for all. Sharia is totally incompatible with western values and the cultures that grew from Judeo-Christian sources.
In short, bringing people whether from Somalia or Saudi or Qatar or Syria, or wherever who are Muslims into our country is very simply and idiotic idea. One only has to look at Europe where the Muslim invasion is far more advanced to see the direction that idiots like Joe Biden and Tim Walz would like this country to go. It isn't what the founders had in mind.
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The government has no business being in the charity business. Leave that to private entities who have a stake in how their money is spent. Once the government gets involved, the effort will be rife with fraud and corruption.
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