Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

Post by 9x39 » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 11:18 PM UTC

joe_mamba wrote: post #105

cogman10 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're beating it around the bush going offtopic and ignoring my question: No I'm not, you just don't like the answer. But at least you've edited to remove the "3 guys yelling at you" portion as I think even you can see how that might be a reasonable thing to do to a creep going around you business filming everything. > daycare having a misspelled sign and boarded up windows? The answer to this question is simple,…

[flagged]

Post by zahlman » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 11:23 PM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #74

tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire story of what happened in Minnesota, as agreed on by basically everybody involved including significant chunks of the government of Minnesota, is that convictions are not a reasonable measure of accuracy here. The story is that they didn't pursue fraud prosecutions in proportion to their severity. Responding to that with "but there weren't convictions" is literally just begging the question. It's very anno…

My ultimate take on the article is "so what?" Yes, fraud is bad. I agreed before I read the article. I've learned (from the article) that there was apparently some fraud in Minnesota, some of which was successfully prosecuted and, possibly, some that wasn't. If pressed, I would say the take away from the article is that the fraud investigators should have been more willing to use race/ethnicity and accept a lower sta…

Post by themacguffinman » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #145

plorkyeran wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough starting an article with a defense of Nick Shirley leads to the comments on an article being about that.

I mean, I wouldn't have led off that way either, but I know what Patrick is talking about and I read the article. I genuinely believe the current administration is the worst in the history of the country, and I also believe that to oppose it effectively we need every government body we run to be completely on the ball, so it's really dispiriting to see people reflexively defend misconduct and incompetence. That shoul…

Post by ls612 » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 12:43 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #70

Look, this is a mostly reasonable, if slightly vague, article about investigating fraud and mechanisms by which you do so. What it lacks is any concrete suggestion as to what should change, beyond some vague allusions that perhaps racial/ethnic profiling should make a comeback. The real problem here though is that the entire article ignores the duty[1] the government owes its citizens. It's "fine"[2] if stripe or vis…

Post by tptacek » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:03 AM UTC

themacguffinman wrote: post #165

tptacek wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I wouldn't have led off that way either, but I know what Patrick is talking about and I read the article. I genuinely believe the current administration is the worst in the history of the country, and I also believe that to oppose it effectively we need every government body we run to be completely on the ball, so it's really dispiriting to see people reflexively defend misconduct and incompetence. That shoul…

No government body is run completely on the ball, which is why it's such an effective bad-faith demand. I don't even know where this belief comes from. I'm certainly not aware of any historical scenario where authoritarian regimes end when their opponents finally embody perfect behavior above reproach.