What is being described in the following passage?
“This fraud crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the result of widespread failure across nearly every level of leadership in Minnesota: Politicians who turned a blind eye. Agencies that failed to act. Prosecutors and law enforcement who didn’t push hard enough. Reporters who ignored the story. Community leaders who stayed silent,” he told the Star Tribune recently. “And a public that wanted to believe it couldn’t happen here.”
That’s from US Attorney General Joe Thompson as reported in the Minnesota Reformer.
Isn’t he talking about state capacity? At every level, at each locus of discretion, action could have been taken to deter the fraudsters. Politicians are powerful and familiar with the levers of influence. Many could have bumped a potential n’er-do-well from the contract they pursued. Bureaucrats are very familiar with slow walking. Anyone in the chain of processing payments could ask for more information, lose pieces of the application, or demand more verifications. Heck, they could have even done they’re job and gone looking for the non-profits’ distribution sites, which, as the reporters later discovered, were vacant shells.
Prosecutors and law enforcement were busy working the other side of the justice spectrum. Anxious about overcharging instead of undercharging, they were busy releasing those who in past years would have received sentences. It’s been avant-garde to look the other way and anticipate a return to the law-abiding citizenry due to this empathetic understanding. (If you haven’t been au courant, this has not been successful.)
The reporters have finally come through five or six years into this monumental fleecing of the public purse. But where or where were they a few years ago? Four years ago? Six years ago? Who’s been persuading them to look away when such a tale was left untold? And the community leader, how about you? At the same parties, I’m sure. Drinking the same cocktails. Talking the same talk of empathy for the wayward results in reduced recidivism. Even though there is no track record. But the fashion of the day prevails. And social circles are heavily influenced by the fear of being left off the invite list for the next big event.
So there you have it. A big state capacity flop. At every level, the few who might have shoved the right disclosing email on the right desk, or talked a bit too much at a party to get the right word in the right ear, all muted. All cloaked down by the desire, no, the need, to be in with the crowd du jour.
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