| ▲ | 650 4 hours ago |
| This article isn't vague at all. It references various sources, and uses precise language (if you can recognize it) to convey its message. Yes, innocent until proven guilty, but the fact that the government has "lesser" educated Fraud analysts, chooses to ask for reimbursement of overbilling, and many more nuanced topics talked about in the article is not vague. |
|
| ▲ | sdwr 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's very indirect. The message is "the government is soft on fraud, partially because of liberal values", but the author does everything possible to not actually say it. |
|
| ▲ | skybrian an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| McKenzie uses paraphrases to avoid writing certain keywords. For example, he never writes "DOGE" or "Elon Musk" in this article. Instead, he writes "We had a poorly-calibrated federal initiative led by a charismatic tech entrepreneur." If you've been reading the news then you can decode these paraphrases, but they do make his articles significantly harder to read. I'm tempted to ask an LLM to replace them with more straightforward references. |
|
| ▲ | wredcoll 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So what is supposed to change based on that? Pay more for better fraud investigators? Accept a lower burden of proof like stripe et al do? What's the take away here? |
| |
| ▲ | nickff 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you want a TLDR; style take-away, the last paragraph is a good place to start: >"Responsible actors in civil society have a mandate to aggressively detect and interdict fraud. If they do not, they cede the field to irresponsible demagogues. They will not be careful in their conclusions. They will not be gentle in their proposals. They will not carefully weigh consequences upon the innocent. But they will be telling a truth that the great and the good are not. The public will believe them, because the public believes its lying eyes." | | |
| ▲ | wredcoll 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ahh, reminds me of the classic appeal. "If you don't do <fascist thing> now, the real fascists will take over!" | | |
| ▲ | nickff 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is auditing state-subsidized service providers fascistic? From this piece, it seems like the state auditor detected some fraud, but there was little follow-up from either the state or 'responsible journalists', so the sensationalists came in with a (predictably) extreme take, after which everyone started slinging mud. The sensationalism could have been forestalled by better auditing by the state, or journalism by large-scale media. I am not sure what part of this is fascist. | | |
| ▲ | wredcoll 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Except the article does mention a whole bunch of people who were investigated, arrested and convicted. So again, now what? Are they supposed to hire more investigators? Work harder? Require less evidence? What part of the system is supposed to change and how? | |
| ▲ | em-bee 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | to aggressively detect and interdict fraud is fascistic, because being aggressive hurts those that want to do it right but are not trusted. an aspect of fascism is to not trust its own people. | | |
| ▲ | Redoubts 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Posts like this make it clearer to me every day why Trump won twice | | |
| ▲ | em-bee 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | bootsmann 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It references sources that don’t claim what it says they do. Notably the Minnesota report alleging 50% fraud does not say that. |
