In retrospect—and here, as always, we're just spitballing about this sort of thing—maybe it wasn't a great idea over the past two years to drop uncountable, unmanageable levels of cash into the economy with essentially no oversight and no real meaningful plan for accountability.
I mean... maybe?
In court filings, the F.B.I. said it had discovered a "massive fraud scheme" among groups that [Minneapolis nonprofit] Feeding Our Future was supposed to oversee, saying they siphoned off tens of millions of dollars by charging taxpayers for nonexistent meals.
In affidavits filed in federal court, the Justice Department said it was investigating at least 15 different feeding operations.
Together, the F.B.I. said, these groups — all of which were supposed to be overseen by Feeding Our Future — had received more than $65 million from federal food programs during the coronavirus pandemic.
"Almost none of this money was used to feed children," the government wrote in one filing. "Instead, conspirators misappropriated the money and used it to purchase real estate, cars and other items."
So you're saying that carpet-bombing a network of American nonprofits with tens of millions of dollars and just crossing our fingers that it would all work out—you mean to say it didn't work out??
I don't know, maybe part of the problem was that we allowed our political leaders to lapse into panic-driven hysteria starting in March of 2020, we permitted them to bring the largest economy in world history grinding to a halt, we put up with an endless series of crippling restrictions and fear-based policy decisions, and in return we let the government spend nearly-unthinkable levels of cash in a clumsy effort to make up for all this chaos.
Maybe that had something to do with it?
Don't forget, however, that—at this point—a lot of this corrupt dysfunction sort of runs on autopilot:
In Minnesota, state regulators said that even after they grew suspicious of Feeding Our Future, they had been constrained by the courts from stopping the organization. In fact, the state paid the group more than $197 million after the first suspicions were raised.
Ahhh, yes, the old "we think they're stealing hundreds of millions of dollars but there's just nothing we could do about it" quandary. It happens to all of us.
"Feeding our Future" is correct—these criminals were most assuredly feeding their own futures instead of the kids going hungry in the city every night.
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