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Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

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Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#201

Post by martythemaniak »

tptacek wrote: post #178
martythemaniak wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an extremely unfortunate and shockingly stupid way to understand the world, but not unreasonable, because it's a accurate reflection of how the world works at the moment. Take a look at the situation "room" at Mar A Lago during the Venezuelan coup: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/trump-situation-room-photos What's the main thing up in the screen? Fucking Twitter, because that's what the US government cares about…

None of this has anything to do with the article.

I'm afraid the executions will continue until you see that it does and this is how support is formed and maintained.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#202

Post by amiga386 »

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…

My take-away from the article is a bunch of fraud-identifying and fraud-thwarting tips.

Ideally, state programs should:

1. not pay out until a beneficiary's bona-fides are first verified. Paying out first, with no verification, and only retrospectively trying to claw back fraudulent claims, only after expensive investigations, is ruinous on the state budget.

2. work with private industry to identify alleged fraudsters

3. require much more verification of alleged fraudsters before agreeing to pay anything out

4. snoop around to find fraudsters' abettors because they're easier to find than the fraudsters

Other than one section saying that fraud investigators should expect to find ethnic clusters (because fraudsters of all ethnicities use their families and friends), there's nothing about ethnicity being a "flag". The biggest flag is that the same person previously committed fraud, and the article laments that civic government often gives a "clean sheet" to known fraudsters, in a way that the finance industry never would.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#203

Post by themacguffinman »

tptacek wrote: post #196
themacguffinman wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to ask people to assume every blue-state government was bad, Nick "name a Democrat city that's prospering right now" Shirley will do that after you, you just have to tee him up by saying the first part: "we need every government body we run to be completely on the ball". I doubt you yourself are engaging in bad faith (of course I recognize your username) but it's still a bad-faith demand to expect "com…

I don't understand this at all. The DFL-controlled government of Minnesota royally fucked up and allowed fraud against a social services program on an industrial scale. That fraud isn't a small crime; it's a grave crime, victimizing the most vulnerable people in our society. It's a very big deal. This is a technical post discussing a variety of different ways in which program administrators could hope to prevent some…

You don't have to care how apolitical it is but the partisan political nature of the post, which it starts and ends with, is why the HN thread is reacting to and discussing partisan politics. What makes it partisan is the shift from admonishing the government to justifying the partisan "irresponsible demagogues" that are currently brutalizing Minnesota by pointing to the blue-state government's slow prosecution of Somali immigrants.

When Charlie Hebdo was bombed and shot, I suppose what people should have been writing is a technical post about the poor quality of their work with tips on how to convey the same artistic point in a way that doesn't invite fanatics to bomb and shoot them, concluding that by not reining in their bad work they have ceded the field to people who will not be gentle in their proposals. Then you can comment things like "What do I care how apolitical it is? The art is what we should care about. That's what the post is about".

Edit: maybe a better analogy would be 9/11 with the US and Al Qaeda, where the US would be less innocent in your political sensibility than Charlie Hebdo and the dynamic I hypothesized was more real.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#204

Post by arduanika »

tptacek wrote: post #194
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hours, I believe. But they can't be deleted if they have been replied to.

The only thing I get for my abnormally high amount of karma is the right to veto one YC startup out of every batch.

Sarcasm, right, I hope? Or do you actually work with YC in some capacity?

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#205

Post by tptacek »

themacguffinman wrote: post #203
tptacek wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this at all. The DFL-controlled government of Minnesota royally fucked up and allowed fraud against a social services program on an industrial scale. That fraud isn't a small crime; it's a grave crime, victimizing the most vulnerable people in our society. It's a very big deal. This is a technical post discussing a variety of different ways in which program administrators could hope to prevent some…

You don't have to care how apolitical it is but the partisan political nature of the post, which it starts and ends with, is why the HN thread is reacting to and discussing partisan politics. What makes it partisan is the shift from admonishing the government to justifying the partisan "irresponsible demagogues" that are currently brutalizing Minnesota by pointing to the blue-state government's slow prosecution of So…

The partisan politics of this story are off-topic for the site! We're supposed to be discussing the substance of the story!

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#206

Post by arduanika »

vharuck wrote: post #126
arduanika wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, you completely lost me at "little green men". What/who is this referring to? Extraterrestrials?

The last time I heard about "little green men" (other than ETs) was to describe obviously-but-unofficially Russian soldiers who invaded Crimea in 2014 and claimed to be natives who wanted Russia to annex the region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea I guess it's now being used as pejorative against groups of vaguely military style. Like the DHS agents conducting Metro Surge.

Hmm. Do you think that kristjansson was using it just to mean state-backed thugs, or were they also claiming some Russia link?

(They haven't responded, and I've been downvoted for even asking the question. I am genuinely confused. I'll admit I don't follow this all very closely, but I want to understand what the phrase means here.)

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#207

Post by themacguffinman »

tptacek wrote: post #205
themacguffinman wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to care how apolitical it is but the partisan political nature of the post, which it starts and ends with, is why the HN thread is reacting to and discussing partisan politics. What makes it partisan is the shift from admonishing the government to justifying the partisan "irresponsible demagogues" that are currently brutalizing Minnesota by pointing to the blue-state government's slow prosecution of So…

The partisan politics of this story are off-topic for the site! We're supposed to be discussing the substance of the story!

The partisan politics are in the story and part of its substance (and really how could it not be? what he's suggesting has substantial political consequences even setting aside the naked partisan jabs). The presence of technical details doesn't negate that, many polemics have technical details.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#208

Post by tptacek »

themacguffinman wrote: post #207
tptacek wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The partisan politics of this story are off-topic for the site! We're supposed to be discussing the substance of the story!

The partisan politics are in the story and part of its substance (and really how could it not be? what he's suggesting has substantial political consequences even setting aside the naked partisan jabs). The presence of technical details doesn't negate that, many polemics have technical details.

That is not a plausible objection to this article and as someone actively involved in Democratic politics and a compulsive HN participant I find this whole thread really embarrassing.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#209

Post by Redoubts »

wredcoll wrote: post #173
em-bee wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you explain that please? as far as i can tell trump is all about not trusting people but aggressively enforcing arbitrary rules no matter the cost. exactly what i am criticizing.

Reality makes some people angry and listening to trump lie makes then feel good again.

This is a very funny reply, given how distant from the truth your posts have been here

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#210

Post by [deleted] »

arduanika wrote: post #206
vharuck wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I heard about "little green men" (other than ETs) was to describe obviously-but-unofficially Russian soldiers who invaded Crimea in 2014 and claimed to be natives who wanted Russia to annex the region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea I guess it's now being used as pejorative against groups of vaguely military style. Like the DHS agents conducting Metro Surge.

Hmm. Do you think that kristjansson was using it just to mean state-backed thugs, or were they also claiming some Russia link? (They haven't responded, and I've been downvoted for even asking the question. I am genuinely confused. I'll admit I don't follow this all very closely, but I want to understand what the phrase means here.)

[deleted]
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