Twin Cities television station FOX 9 this week broke a story about Somali daycare fraud and the possible support of terrorism abroad that rightly made national news. It claimed that up to 100 million dollars in cash was leaving the MSP airport to various destinations, including some controlled by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabab in Somalia.
FOX 9 reminded viewers that it had investigated Somali daycare fraud five years ago and that officials confirmed there are currently ten centers under investigation with another dozen, according to the story, that are suspicious. “Sources in the Somali community told Fox 9 it is an open secret that starting a daycare center is a license to make money. The fraud is so widespread they said, that people buy shares of daycare businesses to get a cut of the huge public subsidies that are pouring in.”
It went on to say “In 2015, investigators documented $14 million in carry on cash. By 2016, it had mushroomed to $84 million. Then last year, $100 million.” That last number would prove to be a source of possible weakness that, remarkably, other Twin Cities news outlets would attack but the FOX 9 story said in its own reporting that the Acting Commissioner for the Department of Human Services Chuck Johnson said “I don’t think half [of the 200 million dollar daycare subsidies Minnesotans pay yearly] sounds credible.”
In addition, FOX 9 ran another story highlighting a government whistleblower, Scott Stillman, who said he tried to warn the Dayton administration of the ongoing fraud and his fears that it financed terrorism abroad. The governor, true to form, said he didn’t know anything about it.
What this means is that we have a dispute not about the widespread fraud engaged in by Somali daycare centers, but only about the amount and how much was sent abroad in cash and whether any of it funded terrorism. At the end of the day, only some particulars, but no essentials, of the FOX 9 reporting could be quibbled with.
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In due course, the Islamified media of the Twin Cities struck back. First CAIR’s handmaidens at MPR went on the attack. “FOX 9 reporting on day care fraud called into question” was the misleading, agitprop headline. The only “question” about the story was a quote from Rep. Keith Ellison and Rep. Ilhan Omar, along with Governor Dayton bleating that his administration had been working hard on it. Right.
Next came the Pioneer Press which ran with the never seen before headline: “Minnesota day-care fraud cash going to terrorists? Let’s unpack this.” This is from an alleged “straight news” reporter but reads more like an opinion piece. Have you ever seen local news media attack or attempt to reframe the narrative of an investigatory piece?
Where were local media seeking to jump on the leads that FOX 9 had opened up for them? Where were they digging further into the story, trying to beat the competition? They weren’t, of course, because local media are part and parcel of the Regressive Left and it’s gospel that the wholesale importation of peoples who have nothing in common with Americans are the only way to improve the country. The disastrous results are seen everywhere but local media’s job is to first deny it and then call you bigoted for noticing.
MPR outdid itself, though, by going after the whistleblower, Scott Stillman, saying a previous dispute with another, competing, forensic investigator discredited him. This tactic is loathsome and transparent but it didn’t stop MPR from running with a headline “Investigator warning of day care fraud made false statements in the past.” There’s no evidence that Stillman is inventing Somali daycare fraud. In fact, Somalis defraud daycare centers around the nation, something MPR seems curiously uninterested in covering.
Yet even MPR reported less than a year ago on a Saint Cloud daycare center being closed due to fraud committed by Abdi Ali Mohamud. Admittedly, the story was very short.
Less than three years ago, WCCO reported on daycare centers, including “Ummah Daycare Center,” being raided and shut down for fraud. “Ummah” refers to the whole of the Muslim community, “a fundamental concept in Islam, expressing the essential unity and theoretical equality of Muslims from diverse cultural and geographical settings. In the Quran, [it] designates people to whom God has sent a prophet or people who are objects of a divine plan of salvation,” according to Oxford Islamic Studies Online.
The idea Islam can assimilate in the West is rejected on its own terms.
Terrorist affiliated CAIR got in on the act, of course, with Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR Minnesota, accusing some Republicans of using “fearful, anti-Muslim rhetoric” for political gain at a news conference. Yes, you’re supposed to ignore being ripped off or else you’ll be called an Islamophobe. This nonsense doesn’t work anymore.
Just yesterday the Star Tribune ran a soft-focus lens, fuzzy kittens story about how a Somali woman isn’t defrauding the state in her daycare and we shouldn’t pay attention to those who are because that’s mean. I barely simplify; read the story yourself. This isn’t news, it’s sheer Islamist propaganda.
Naturally, Rep. Ilhan Omar identified people who object to being robbed as the real villains, saying “Vilifying an entire community — as stories like this often do — does not serve justice or get results. Collaboration does.” Facts don’t vilify and there’s no collaboration from the Somalis but she thinks you’re stupid. Remember: “the fraud is so widespread that people buy shares of daycare businesses to get a cut of the huge public subsidies that are pouring in.”
Female genital mutilation, terrorism, welfare dependency, fraud, a refusal to assimilate, why one would think there’s enough trouble in her own “community” to keep this Islamist Barbie doll busy for the rest of her natural life. Instead she blames citizens who welcomed these people in the first place.
When CAIR Minnesota held its press conference, pictured above, she was nowhere to be seen. Then again, not a single Somali woman was. Why is that? The question is rhetorical, of course, but revealing.
Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles has opened an investigation into daycare fraud, regardless of who is committing it and this is not only as it should be, it’s overdue. He will only look at the issue of fraud per se and not as to whether any of the money stolen is making its way into the hands of terrorist groups as that is a federal, not state, matter. I hope he focuses, in particular, on the failure of existing mechanisms to detect fraud, instead of it being revealed on an ad hoc basis.
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Twelve long years ago the American Conservative published “The Great Somali Welfare Hunt.” You owe it to yourself to read its unflinching coverage of what was really going on then and has only worsened with time. The author speaks of areas “targeted” for resettlement and the disastrous consequences that have ensued. Did I say you owe it to yourself to read this?
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Daycare fraud is not limited to Somalis by any means but, using a metric of the Regressive Left, Somalis are vastly “overrepresented” in daycare fraud. Why is this? Why are people who are fantastically lucky to be in America in the first place prone to ripping off this country? That’s a question that needs to be confronted honestly, especially within the Somali community itself. While we’re at it, home health care services is another area of fraud in which Somalis are overrepresented. Perhaps our legislators should look at that while they’re at it.
Above all, the coordinated, nationwide fraud shows the insanity of having a chain migration based immigration system. Those here by good luck should not be in control of who else are allowed in. American citizens writ large should be in charge. Merit-based immigration allows for admission of those who actually benefit we who live here, something the current system does the reverse of. Enough.
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In addition to Alpha News, John Gilmore is also a contributor to The Hill. He is the founder and executive director of Minnesota Media Monitor.™ He blogs at MinnesotaConservatives.org and is on Twitter under @Shabbosgoy. He can be reached at Wbua@nycunarjfza.pbz
John Gilmore
John Gilmore is an author, freelance writer & former opinion columnist for Alpha News. He blogs at minnesotaconservatives.org & is @Shabbosgoy on Twitter
