Where’s that $9 billion in fraud?
Before determining (along with numerous colleagues) that he could no longer deal with the vile realities of what working for Trump really means, Joe Thompson claimed, back in December when he was still a US attorney, that there was at least $9 billion in fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs yet to be brought to light. Steve wrote a story about it.
Joe Thompson has proven in court the smallest sliver of $9 billion. The speculation and odious pretrial publicity in Thompson’s remarks are breathtaking. That they were delivered, laying them at the feet of Minnesota’s Somali community, while flanked by seven (7) (that’s how lawyers write it) white office apparatchiks — words fail me. Well, two words don’t fail me: racist and xenophobic.
(LeftMN)
What I’m doing now, though, isn’t about Joe Thompson and/or the Trump administration. It’s about Minnesota’s corporate media.
I spent a while this morning web-searching what comes up when you enter “Joe Thompson fraud Minnesota.” Despite, as Steve noted, Thompson having provided no evidence whatsoever for $9B, all of Minnesota’s major “legacy” news media – the Minnesota Star Tribune, MPR, and all four of the major broadcast networks – gleefully ran with it. Oh, there was an occasional fleeting caveat, but no more. And I didn’t find any subsequent mention of the following among MN’s media bigs, except in one CBS article and a Strib opinion piece. From January:
The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) says that new federal data released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) shows the overall rate of improper payment in Minnesota’s Medicaid program is far below national averages.
In the report released earlier this week, CMS found an error rate of 2.3%, which is lower than the national average of 6.1%.
(KEYC)
That model of rational sanity Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in the metro in May to announce the results of a supposedly blockbuster federal fraud investigation. The $90 million that was pimped is all of one percent of $9 billion.
To be fair, I suppose, since then the aforementioned corporate propaganda outlets have mostly left that $9B number alone. But have they apologized and promised to stop engaging in such sorry, crap ”journalism?” Yeah, I’m kidding, all right. Sometimes I crack myself up with my own momentary flights of bizarre fantasy.
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