This Amounts to Fraud by Design

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool

Is owning 17 cars, one of which is a Lambourgini, a "lifestyle choice?"

Sure. Of course it is. 

But is it a lifestyle choice that should be subsidized by the state, legally, I might add, in the name of helping poor people be able to eat good food?

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According to Minnesota Democrats, the answer is "most certainly."

By now everybody in America who is not brainwashed knows at least a little bit about the massive fraud in Minnesota's welfare system, but almost nobody knows that the system is designed to defraud the taxpayers in ways that don't even technically break the law. It is fraud, but not in the traditional sense; it is using a system sold as helping poor people to subsidize the lifestyles of politicians' clients. 

Minnesota, like some other states, has dropped many of the income and asset requirements you would expect people to meet to be eligible for SNAP. It turns out you can be quite wealthy and still get assistance meant for poor people to help them meet their basic needs. 

It's a loophole you could drive a truck through. A very big, very expensive truck. 

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Mohamed Elshazli and Magda Elsagher told the state of Minnesota they had $200 to their name and one car.

Investigators later found 17 vehicles registered to the couple, $2.2 million wired overseas, and $50,000 dropped at a single jewelry store. Over seven years and continual recertifications, the Anoka County family collected more than $860,000 in medical assistance and food stamp benefits, all built on a lie that never should have worked.

Here’s the part that should really bother you: they didn’t even need to lie. Under Minnesota’s own rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), they could have told the truth about their fleet of vehicles and bank accounts and kept right on collecting food stamp benefits. Minnesota doesn’t restrict SNAP benefits to the needy. A millionaire with a garage full of Lamborghinis can qualify for food stamps in this state, legally. The Anoka County couple didn’t slip through a crack in the system; they walked through a door Minnesota left wide open.

This is not an isolated glitch. It’s a pattern.

Every time Washington and St. Paul have expanded SNAP in a hurry, oversight has been left behind to catch up on its own time. During the Obama administration, in the years following the Great Recession, SNAP participation jumped nearly 60 percent nationally while costs rose almost 90 percent. Then COVID hit, and it happened again: enrollment grew by about 20 percent, but thanks to a 2021 rewrite of the benefits formula, costs surged another 90 percent. The result is a program that has ballooned from roughly $38 billion a year in 2008 to about $100 billion by the end of 2024.

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Now, given how common it is for any program, no less a government-designed one, to have loopholes that people exploit, it's not shocking that something like this happens. Government is worse because there is no cost to the people who make mistakes; in fact, they often benefit by administering a bigger program and building an empire. 

But what should be shocking is how the Democrats are determined to keep these "loopholes" open; they don't even appear ashamed, although they make noises about reforms in election cycles. 

When it's time to reform them out of existence, though, they say no. Instead, they justify the policies. It's the same bait-and-switch they often make, inventing fake parades of horrors, or bizarre excuses for why common-sense reforms are outrageous attacks on blacks, poor people, or some other favored group. 

If you want to know a system's real purpose, watch what it does, not the stated reason for its existence. And what it does is throw money at Democrat constituencies. 

For some reason, taxpayers play Charlie Brown, getting fooled by a devious Lucy who always betrays him. They are Flounder in Animal House, only they don't realize it. 

Invent your own analogy. You get the point. 

When Republicans go to the voters with these stories, anybody in a Democrat area is fine with it, and Independents seem basically unbothered beyond muttering that these things need to be fixed, and then many still go vote Democrat. 

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This is the sort of thing that makes me call the old Democrats the "Organized Crime Democrats," and their only virtue is that, for the most part, they only cost us money and liberty; the bolsheviks want us dead. 

Still, many Republicans are depressed about Trump's actions of late and are muttering about staying home. That is as irresponsible as the Independents who give the Democrats a pass for treating us like chumps. Trump has delivered a lot, despite steady opposition from Democrats and activist judges. 

We need that progress to continue, and at a faster pace. Not to punish him for not living up to our high standards all the time. Sure, keep the high standards and complain all you like, but don't cut your nose off to spite your face. 

Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.

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