“(And while some readers may give nary a rat’s backside about the Land of 11,482 Lakes, bureaucratic malfeasance isn’t a tundra-specific problem—it’s a preview of what happens anywhere questionable politics meets unlimited funding.)” From Jenna McCarthy at jennasside.rocks:
This week’s political weather brought to you by an intrepid 23-year-old YouTuber
I hope everyone had a blessed, joyous Christmas filled with dear family, close friends, delicious food, and an embarrassment of excess. Thanks for your patience while I enjoyed my favorite people under one roof and a desperately needed media fast. This week will be a short one also—apologies in advance—but for now I’m back, caffeinated, and at your service.
Yes, it was 80 degrees on Christmas here. We managed. 😉
Over the weekend, while normal people were waiting in two-hour lines to return the Abercrombie & Fitch Christmas sweaters we they somehow accidentally bought twice after briefly blacking out during a “40% off ends tonight” shopping spree, the internet was very busy blowing up over a documentary by an independent YouTuber I’d never even heard of until my group chat exploded. In the 42-minute flick, Nick Shirley exposed the latest public-assistance fraud in Minnesota—this time, seemingly bottomless piles of taxpayer dollars that were paid out to Somali childcare centers that claimed to be operating at full capacity—but in reality, didn’t actually exist.
What the 23-year-old self-described “watchdog” found, according to publicly available data cross-referenced with his own footage, was a constellation of providers collecting tens of millions in public funds while appearing—on a random weekday during normal business hours—to be closed, vacant, unmarked, or operating at a level best described as theoretical.
