By now, it should be clear that, with few exceptions, the only real journalism is done by independent media.
Notice how I didn't say conservative media, because, to be honest, that would be unfair. There are left-leaning outlets that still do journalism; it's the big corporate media that tend to shy away from creating adversaries among people with power, and that, frankly, employ journalists who rarely do more than regurgitate whatever pablum or bile spewed at them by flaks.
A case in point is the coverage of Minnesota's corruption scandals. Not scandal, but scandals that together will add up to 10 figures of money, essentially directed by the Walz administration to mostly Somali scammers. We likely will never know the full scale, but what we do know should discredit Walz and the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
Newsflash: Walz and the DFL will come out of it fine, because the fraud gets relatively little coverage by the Pravda Media, who think that a story here of there is coverage enough.
First to report about the feds autism investigation. https://t.co/rA2hdhtRHZ
— j. patrick coolican (@jpcoolican) September 25, 2025
The Minnesota Reformer, which serves as the left's version of Alpha News, the conservative-leaning independent media site that does such great work--has done a far better job covering the massive fraud that plagues our state government—fraud that is duplicated to at least some degree in Blue states that are fun by governors and legislators who see their primary job as funneling money to cronies.
We have the most evidence of this here in Minnesota because the US Attorney in our state has made it his mission to do what Tim Walz's administration and our Attorney General, Keith Ellison, will not because they are in on the scams.
The biggest scandal so far is the defrauding of the COVID-era school lunch program replacement, in what is known as the "Feeding Our Future" scandal. Around $250 million was stolen.
And in 2023 I wrote a column practically begging leading Dems to clean this up, fast. https://t.co/yMkRguSIhz
— j. patrick coolican (@jpcoolican) September 25, 2025
J. Patrick Coolican, a former reporter for the Star Tribune, was never a favorite of conservatives. But he has done fine work at The Reformer and was one of the few who tried to blow the whistle on the scams. He has been plugging away at the story, while the Pravda Media has only covered the problem in fits and starts.
Most Minnesotans live under the illusion that our government is Scandinavian clean and compassionate, while the truth is that it exists mainly to funnel money to preferred constituencies. There are programs that kind of run on autopilot, but when you see politicians go all in on some program or another, you can bet that there is big money being made by somebody associated with them.
Imagine someone taken in by Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, who then took whatever money was recovered and invested it in Theranos, the phony blood testing company.
Baffled and appalled.
That’s how Minnesota taxpayers should be feeling about their state government in the past week following federal fraud charges, which allege that two separate Medicaid programs were bilked by scammers, even as the feds have continued to charge new defendants in the notorious Feeding Our Future case.
The Reformer was first to report on a wide-ranging federal investigation of the state’s autism treatment program last year, which arose out of the Feeding Our Future food aid scandal that cost taxpayers at least $250 million in federal money.
The feds had an inkling about the autism program because some Feeding Our Future defendants also ran autism treatment facilities — multitasking!
The FBI executed search warrants of two operators in December. Now, Asha Farhan Hassan has been charged and plans to plead guilty, according to her attorney, for her role in a $14 million scheme to defraud the autism program.
Maybe someone at DHS should have noticed that spending on autism was exploding beyond reason: The number of providers — who are supposed to diagnose and treat people with autism spectrum disorder — increased 700% in five years, climbing from 41 providers in 2018 to over 300 in 2023, while spending increased 3,000%, from about $6 million to nearly $192 million — according to DHS data.
When we asked about this in June of 2024, DHS was unperturbed: “I don’t think we are surprised or particularly disturbed by the rate of growth,” said a DHS assistant commissioner.
(Hilariously, she said the growth was “pretty consistent” with other DHS programs, such as “housing stabilization services,” a program we now know was so riddled with fraud that Gov. Tim Walz moved to shut it down last month.)
The programs are always sold as being especially compassionate, in the way that the public schools are shielded from scrutiny by hiding behind "the children." How can you criticize the children? Hungry people? Children who need day care? The autistic?
The "recipients" are just shields used to prevent criticism and scrutiny. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow through these programs to NGOs, and the NGOs are usually fronts.
Let’s recall a criticism of state government during Feeding Our Future: Even though for-profit companies and nonprofits claimed to be serving hundreds of thousands of meals from addresses linked to apartment buildings, an apartment complex for seniors and a townhome, among other suspicious sites, the Minnesota Department of Education, which administered the program, never visited them.
And, still, DHS was guilty of the same lax oversight, only beginning site visits years after the autism program launched.
Let’s go back further, however. In the summer of 2023, we reported that about half of the people who to that point had been charged in the Feeding Our Future case had other state contracts.
How did DHS respond? The agency told the Reformer — after months of stonewalling — that they’d reviewed the contracts with Feeding Our Future defendants and hadn’t turned up evidence of fraud.
That wasn’t the only warning DHS should have been wise to, however.
As the Star Tribune recently reported, DHS was warned, also in 2023, about potential fraud in the aforementioned housing stabilization program, designed to help people secure housing after they’d come out of rehab or were struggling with homelessness.
According to the Strib, a “caseworker notified the state in September 2023 that Faladcare LLC was falsifying timesheets to receive payments.”
DHS never investigated, however, “referring it instead to an outside Medicaid administrator.”
The subject of the tip was among eight people charged last week. More charges linked to fraud in that program are likely.
While DHS was passing the buck, the bucks were flowing: Spending on housing stabilization services — another Medicaid program — skyrocketed in recent years.
This sort of thing isn't a bug, but a feature of how many government programs work.
In other states, there are similar scams. In California, homelessness is big business for NGOs. Lots of money flows in, and the only result is more homeless people, which in turn means more funding for the NGOs.
Scams like this are even better than one of the nearly ideal government programs—the California High Speed Rail project. Billions of dollars spent, and absolutely nothing to show for it but a few concrete pillars. The only flaw in the ointment on that one is that Donald Trump is killing it, unless California can stop him. The plan is to stretch out the program for decades, filling the pockets of consultants and speculators, without delivering a thing.
Here in Minnesota, the lefties have a slogan: "Happy to pay for a better Minnesota." Except...Minnesota taxes don't go to bettering Minnesota. They flow to favored constituencies. Rail programs that are disasters, NGOs that pocket the money, and consultants that hire Democrats. Meanwhile, our schools deteriorate, and our cities are hollowing out.
There will always be some level of corruption in any large organization because human beings are like that. But Blue-state and city governments exist mainly to skim the cream off the top, and the greed is so great these days that they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I tip my hat to independent journalists of any ideology who focus on doing real journalism, because corporate media won't do the work. It is too hard, offends too many people, and interferes with their ability to move freely in the right social circles.
Tip of the hat, Patrick.
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