Minnesota Reveals the truth: Bureaucrats don’t cure poverty — they feed on it

The urge to charity is a noble one, I think. Wanting to help (if welcomed) family and friends should come automatically to most of us, I’d think.

That desire should also extend outward (in diminishing urgency) to the plight of neighbors, townsfolk, humanity at large — even down to wanting to pluck the thorn from a lions paw.

Empathy is a good thing, I’m saying — so long as it isn’t pathologized.

But the helper/helpee relationship can also become a toxic, unhealthy one if things like co-dependency, domineering, fraud, contempt (and the like) slither into the relationship.

In order to avoid these bad things, all participants in a charitable “transaction” need to act with integrity, honesty, and a pure and noble heart — which is why government sucks at it.

Monopoly government funded via coercion should be nowhere near charity. Government is none of those good things. If bureaucracies engage in “charity” doled out from the proceeds of the robbery that is taxation, nothing good can come of it.

The simple reason is that with government involvement, everybody faces a perverse incentive structure. Fraud, waste, abuse, and dependence (or worse) are the perfectly predictable outcomes of all government charity programs.

If government is involved, expect poverty and need to continue (or grow!) rather than be eliminated — or even diminished. Bet on it.

The debacle in Minnesota is the perfect example — starting with the massive fraud schemes tied to the state’s Somali immigrant community.

Over the last several years, federal prosecutors have charged dozens (in some counts, over 90 individuals, with the vast majority of Somali descent) in a sprawling web of scams targeting social services like child nutrition, daycare subsidies, Medicaid-funded programs, housing assistance, and more.

Billions (yes, billions!) allegedly stolen through fake claims for services never provided, inflated numbers, and outright fabrication.

Minnesota also gave us the infamous Feeding Our Future nonprofit, which falsely billed for meals to needy kids during COVID, ballooning to over $250 million in proven theft (with federal estimates pushing the broader related fraud toward $9 billion or more across various programs).

Money vanished into luxury goods, real estate, overseas transfers — even, per some counterterrorism sources, indirectly benefiting groups like Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

State agencies ignored red flags, whistleblowers got sidelined, and the cash kept flowing because questioning it might disrupt the machine, alienate a huge voting bloc (of crooks!) or invite accusations of racial bias.

A viral video in late 2025 spotlighted alleged daycare center rackets, freezing federal funds and drawing national heat — including from President Trump, who called Minnesota a “hub of fraudulent money laundering” and ramped up deportations targeting the community.

But this isn’t a Minnesota problem, or an immigrant problem, it’s a structural problem inherent in the nature of government programs themselves. Bad outcomes aren’t some unfortunate outlier, they are the rule.

Look at the SNAP food assistance racket — USDA estimates $12 billion a year vanishing into fraud, with states underreporting the theft like it’s no big deal. Families who actually need help get shortchanged while crooks skim off the top through trafficking benefits or bogus claims.

Or take the Obamacare enrollment scam: brokers enrolling fake people or switching real ones without consent, pocketing commissions while taxpayers foot $2,350 a month per phony account in subsidies.

The loosened rules created a nonstop enrollment party for low-income claims, and boom — fraud explodes.

And don’t get me started on PPP loans from the “pandemic”: billions stolen by frauds faking businesses, with ex-government insiders even dipping in using their positions to game the system.

How about health care fraud? A whopping $14.6 billion in schemes busted in 2025 alone, from fake urinary catheters to ripping off Medicaid for Native American addiction treatment.

New York Medicaid alone got hit for $68 million in home care fraud, with kickbacks and phony billing galore.

See the pattern? These aren’t accidents; they’re baked into the cake. Government “charity” runs on other people’s money — taxes yanked from you at gunpoint — and who cares what happens to other people’s money?

No skin in the game means no care. Bureaucrats spend like it’s Monopoly cash because it’s not theirs.

Compare that to private charity, where money given voluntary is administered by folks who actually give a damn — or else. Donors watch where it goes, demand results, and pull funding if it’s wasted.

When relationships are voluntary, incentives align: solve the problem, build trust, attract more help.

It’s the opposite with government programs. If poverty vanishes, poof — there goes jobs for the paper-pushers, the overseers, the whole bloated machine.

So what do they do? Perpetuate the mess. Grow the programs, ignore fraud, gaslight us about “helping the needy” while lining their pockets and entrenching the so-called “underclass” in a perverse cycle of dependence.

It’s not empathy; it’s a racket. Real charity thrives on freedom, accountability, honesty, and heart. Government twists it into a toxic swamp of waste and corruption.

Wake up, folks — time to starve the beast and let people help people the honest way — voluntarily.

Naturally,

Adam