alt Hacker NewsThe Swanson memo memorializes the consensus of his investigatory group and, put to question by OLA and legislators, they stick with that story:
Page 14 of PDF:
[The OLA] did not find evidence to substantiate Stillman’s allegation that there is $100 million in CCAP fraud annually. We did, on the other hand, find that the state’s CCAP fraud investigators generally agree with Stillman’s opinions about the level of CCAP fraud, as well as why it is so pervasive.
(Stillman is a line level investigator who gave a media statement which was explosive. Swanson, who authored in the internal memo, was his manager.)
I do mention that other officials only agreed to characterize as fraud fraud which had resulted in convictions. We now, years later, have nine figures just from the convictions (and guilty pleas). These officials pointedly refuse to put any number on fraud other than the number incident to convictions.
Moreover: you should be very clearly correct if you accuse someone of citing a document as making claims it does not say. That is a serious accusation. BAM's citation of this piece is "the state’s own investigators believed that, over the past several years, greater than fifty percent of all reimbursements to daycare centers were fraudulent." This is _absolutely true_ and _is in the report as claimed_.
Replies
I'm very amenable to the argument made in the blog post, but the tone and sidecars attached made it feel quite off, like if I looked into it, it'd turn out there was a rush to get the main idea down so we could get the sidecars attached.
Spent about 30 minutes consulting the report you mention, OP's post, and your reply, and there's clearly issues.
In the essay, you wrote that industrial-scale fraud is "beyond intellectually serious dispute," cited the OLA report, and presented the 50% figure as the finding that "staggers the imagination." (this should have been a tell)
When challenged, you retreat to: "My citation that investigators believed this is absolutely true."
Those are completely different claims. "An investigator believed X" is not "X is beyond intellectually serious dispute" — especially when the same report on the same pages says:
- The OLA itself: "We did not find evidence to substantiate the allegation" (p. 5)
- The DHS Inspector General: "I do not trust the allegation that 50 percent of CCAP money is being paid fraudulently" (p. 12)
- The investigators themselves had "varying levels of certainty — some thought it could be less, and some said they did not have enough experience to have an opinion" (p. 9)
- Swanson explicitly used "a view that does not require the kind of proof needed in a criminal or administrative proceeding" (p. 10), counting the entire payment to any center with poorly-supervised kids as "fraud"
That's not "beyond intellectually serious dispute." It is, literally, a documented dispute, inside the very report you cite as settling the matter.
And "nine figures from convictions"? That's Feeding Our Future, a federal food nutrition program. The OLA report is about CCAP, a state childcare program. Proven CCAP fraud remains at $5-6 million. You're retroactively validating a CCAP claim with convictions from a different program.
OP didn't claim you of misrepresenting facts in the document directly; OP claimed you of grossly mischaracterizing those facts in order to support claims the document does not support. The document is cited as supporting massive fraud "beyond intellectually serious dispute" while the scale of the fraud is disputed in the cited document.
But, on the other hand, I suppose intellectually serious dispute requires both sides to be intellectually serious. One good step in that direction would be to arrange one's citations such that they are supporting the claims you are citing them for.
I will also remark, as others have, that it's odd to make a big deal about this particular fraud when there's a lot more fraud happening a lot more obviously in a lot more of the nation. This is not to question Minnesota officials who are, rightly and appropriately, investigating suspected fraud in their zone of investigation; but it is worth questioning voices who have, apropos of nothing I can discern, made decisions about what's important to talk about and what isn't, and further made decisions to misrepresent allegations in alignment with people who very aggressively lie for evil reasons. As others have pointed out, the essay's core is seemingly cromulent, and it doesn't need you to do that.