site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   28955 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://archive.ph/IHPLW

Tim Walz isn't seeking reelection.

It's been interesting watching the reaction in my various social circles as this plays out. It seems like it's rapidly coalescing into two distinct narratives depending on tribal alliance:

  1. Walz is hoping to get out of the spotlight before he's indicted in connection to the fraud scandal
  2. Walz fears for his life because insane ultra-MAGA instigators are trying to ruin him.

I don't know if either are actually true, but it's an interesting thing to watch develop in real time.

New Nick Shirley video just dropped and it's a banger: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LmIrwjKQQKc

This one is a long-form, extended interview with David, the older man from the previous video. Apparently he's been investigating this stuff for years, rather obsessively, to the point where he's lost friends and family because they just think he's some sort of crazy racist person for investigating.

It's a bit long and meandering, so it's hard to keep track of all the claims made in it. I think we'll need time to process this and investigate further. I'd like to see this written in text with sources, instead of just a long interview. But among the claims made:

  • That this is all organized by Somali gangs, with the gang leaders bringing retribution on any family that doesn't go along with it. Investigators like David also get threatened with violence.
  • Widespread voter fraud from families living in collective housing. One person collects the ballots, "vouches" for all the people living there with no proof, and then returns a massive ballot stack all voting the same way.
  • "This is the worst fraud in human history." He estimates that a total of $80-100 billion was stolen by fraud in Minnesota
  • "However bad you imagine it is, it's worse. He alledges that basically every social program in Minnesota is now heavily corrupted by fraud. Some of the biggest are schools that might have 10 students, but pretending to get 100 or more so that they can get massive amounts of state funding. Medical services do the same.
  • This is all protected by the government and judicial system of Minnesota. At one point, David did the work to prove that a Somali leader did $7.2 million of fraud. He was convicted unanimously by a jury, but the judge overturned the verdict and left him free to continue collecting more money. The judges are elected, probably with the help of fraudalent Somali votes.
  • This isn't just state money, it's also federal money. This increases the scale, but also increases the severity of the crimes.
  • That Somalians routinely travel back to Somali, taking large amounts of cash with them (well over the TSA limit of $10,000), and for some reason the TSA grants them an exception to this when any normal American would be arrested or stopped for questioning.

So... will this lead to anything further? Tim Walz already said he won't run for reelection, but at this point I no longer think that's enough. The feds need to come purge the entire state government of Minnesota on charges of racketeering and voter fraud.

  • This is all protected by the government and judicial system of Minnesota. At one point, David did the work to prove that a Somali leader did $7.2 million of fraud. He was convicted unanimously by a jury, but the judge overturned the verdict and left him free to continue collecting more money. The judges are elected, probably with the help of fraudalent Somali votes.
  • This isn't just state money, it's also federal money. This increases the scale, but also increases the severity of the crimes.
  • That Somalians routinely travel back to Somali, taking large amounts of cash with them (well over the TSA limit of $10,000), and for some reason the TSA grants them an exception to this when any normal American would be arrested or stopped for questioning.

I'm reminded of some quotes from things I've seen and read online recently, and some thoughts about them on which I've been building. First, from Malcolm Collins on the Based Camp episode about rising antisemitism (my transcription):

I actually think that a lot of the leftist anti-semitism comes from, when they are modeling what the future of humanity looks like, what the future of out existing geopolitical architecture looks like, they don’t actually plan on them existing in the future.

Like, I can talk to, like, gays and trans people, and I can be like, but really, you see if only people who hate you continue to have kids, in the future, only people who cannot allow your culture to exist are going to be the dominant cultures on Earth. I talk about this in terms of pro-natalism all the time, and they’re often just like, they don’t really see it as a problem. And I’ve always been very confused as to how they don’t see it as a problem.

And what I’m realizing, and you see the wokies in, what is it, Michigan, giving all the money to the Somalians, right? It was this big scam where, like, billions have — and it’s clear that a lot of wokies knew this was happening.— to Islamist groups in Somalia. They see the future of their movements, and the territories that they feel they de facto control, as something they want to hand to Muslim groups.

They believe in a Muslim future, and because of that, they see that future as incompatible with Jewish interests, because they’re, sort of, the Muslims within the top circles of their intellectual communities. And I find this very interesting. Trace the intellectual giants on the left right now, and many of them are tied to Islamism in some way or another. Especially the younger ones. Especially the younger ones. And this didn’t used to be the case.

Or then there's Andrew Gold in his debate with "Britain's Biggest RAC*ST" Steve Laws:

At some point unfortunately white people will become a minority and will probably go extinct.

We've talked here on the Motte about how the birthrate problem is unsolvable. @hydroacetylene repeatedly talks of how the Blue Tribe is demographically doomed (with unearned, unsupported confidence that this means inevitable victory for him and his).

An analogy has been forming in my mind to how people deal with a terminal diagnosis. Do you spend your final months in a hospital, pumped full of chemotherapy, surgery after surgery, plugged into more and more machines, and liquidating your net worth to fund it all, in the hopes of dragging out an increasingly miserable, pain-filled existence for every last hour you can? Or do you get some prescriptions for painkillers and palliatives, write up your will, go on a short trip to see a few of the sights you always wanted to visit, then come home to friends and family, pass on what stories and words of wisdom you can, and enjoy every day to its fullest as you embrace the inevitable?

Now consider that tribes, cultures, civilizations — they're mortal too. They can be terminal. And so, it becomes about maximizing the time you have… and deciding to whom you will be handing off everything you've built.

And isn't the choice really obvious, once you think about it? I mean, who should "inherit" Minnesota? A bunch of uneducated, uncultured, gay-bashing, women-oppressing, cousin-fucking, tribal religious fanatics…

…or some nice POC Muslim immigrants?

Well, as slatestarcodex mentioned a long time ago, liberals and gays don't necessarily grow their population by having kids- they grow by getting converts from other groups. Conservative christians (and some Jewish groups) have more kids, but those kids also tend to leave the religion at high rates.

Muslims are maybe unique in that, not only do they have a lot of kids, but those kids also stay muslim. In fact, they're bringing in a lot of converts. I guess because anyone who marries a Muslim or moves to a majority Muslim area is pretty much forced to convert. It's actually kind of fascinating that we live in a time where most religions are in decline, but this hard-core, old-school, repressive, fundamentalist religion is growing like gangbusters.

It grows because it uses coercion without facing any external censure. Converting to Islam is celebrated as diversity, apostates are killed and then "culture" is blamed while ignoring Islams culpability.

You can only gain converts to your cause when the prize makes it worth it and the liberals are handing out their seedcorn to tourists stopping by. The TQ+ of the rainbow coalition is uninvestigated and allowed in, just like every Nigerian or Caribbean warlords offspring gets to claim black solidarity to get a seat at the trough. White liberals at the roost want to destroy their own societies because they make the category error that impoverishing white institutions only harms the uneducated white hicks. That the white hicks are a bulwark against a Hamtrack style takeover by even worse conservatives just doesnt register.

White liberals may continue to get converts for a while, but whether that sustains is questionable. Their time at the top has been pretty bad and when the pie starts shrinking theres a free for all where everyone tries to get as much as they can before escaping. Rate of growth slowing is the first canary in the coal mine, once it flips it will be an exercise in statistical fudgery (we are likely here now) before raiding the pot for scraps.

Hamtrack style takeover

I'm not sure I follow- what is this referencing?

White liberals at the roost want to destroy their own societies because they make the category error that impoverishing white institutions only harms the uneducated white hicks.

Well, that and- because they're relatively rich (ironically, due to good institutions)- they're insulated from the consequences of destroying the institutions. Besides, they'll still be on top afterwards due to their Allyship(tm) that was definitely earned and not just appropriated.

Hamtrack style takeover

what is this referencing?

Hamtramck, Michigan, has been in the news a lot for having been taken over by Muslims. One article of many:

A Detroit-area community has banned LGBTQ+ flags from publicly owned flagpoles after a tense hourslong meeting that raised questions about discrimination, religion and the city’s reputation for welcoming newcomers.

Some members of the all-Muslim council said the pride flag clashes with the beliefs of some members of their faith. Businesses and residents aren’t prohibited from displaying a pride flag on their own property.

Hamtramck, population 27,000, is an enclave surrounded by Detroit. More than 40% of residents were born in other countries [and 70 percent speak a language other than English at home], according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and a significant share are of Yemeni or Bangladeshi descent.

The council voted unanimously to display only five flags, including the American flag, the Michigan flag and one that represents the native countries of immigrant residents.

Its only residents of third world shitholes who insist on flying their flag as a mark of conquest on territories they conquer. No fucking Taiwanese or Korean or Japanese flag gets flown in Orange County, its only these muslim countries. The obvious hostile conquering attitude on display is a celebration that should be interpreted as the threat it is, yet the invasion is allowed to continue unmolested. The blind love of multiculturalism will end with Zimbabwe style disenfranchisement of whites followed by annihilation of anything of value as the scavengers pick off anything that made the communities viable to begin with.

Its only residents of third world shitholes who insist on flying their flag as a mark of conquest on territories they conquer.

Oh no, lots of First Worlders do this too; that's why they treat people removing or burning their "progress" flag as a war crime.

More comments

This. Travel through Germany and from the flags you'd think you were in Turkey or Albania. From the music you hear, no idea I don't actually know but "vaguely islamic" fits the bill. The spoken languages, ditto.

Like, I can talk to, like, gays and trans people, and I can be like, but really, you see if only people who hate you continue to have kids, in the future, only people who cannot allow your culture to exist are going to be the dominant cultures on Earth. I talk about this in terms of pro-natalism all the time, and they’re often just like, they don’t really see it as a problem. And I’ve always been very confused as to how they don’t see it as a problem.

Because the line is "there have always been gay and trans people". And that's correct, as far as it goes: we've had millennia of pro-heterosexual society, and yet even where they must hide in order to pass as part of mainstream society, LGBT people existed and formed sub-cultures of their own.

So there isn't any worry, because so what if the cishets are the ones having kids? Historically, and statistically, some of those kids will be gay and/or trans. Unless they're going to genetically engineer all embryos to be cishet, there's no getting rid of the LGBT (apart from the genocide solution). Even if persecuted, LGBT people will exist in secret, and some day that future society will be liberal enough to give them their rights.

Speaking of immigrant gangs and large scale fraud reminded me of the various fake colleges scams in the UK.

2014
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/dec/02/students-private-higher-education-colleges-taxpayer-subsidy-benefits-nao-loans

A separate internal government inquiry found that 1,000 of these students, most of whom come from Bulgaria and Romania, were definitely fraudulent and had already claimed £5.4m in student loans before being found out. The government has been able to recover just 7% of that money so far, the NAO said.

In 2012 Willetts said he wanted to see alternative providers take on established universities and offer students even more choice. These colleges were allowed to charge £6,000 a year in fees, which their students could draw from the government-backed Student Loans Company.

But though they were in receipt of public money, Willetts was unable to get new parliamentary powers he needed to hold private colleges to proper account with inspection regimes or demands to see their books, after Lib Dems backed out of supporting a new education bill.

Tuesday’s report was prompted by a Guardian investigation into the sector which found that lectures were teaching to empty or near-empty classrooms. Students and staff alleged that bogus students who were barely literate were using colleges as a “cash point” to access loans they believed they would never pay back.

The NAO findings highlighted that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) lacked basic powers to monitor publicly funded students’ attendance and their progress, even as it relaxed the purse strings to fund private sector growth. It said the department had not defined “an expectation of what might constitute an acceptable dropout rate” for the sector, let alone scrutinised whether the rates were too high.

Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the University College Union, which represents academic and other college staff, said the government failed to police the system it had created. “While we are pleased the misuse of public funds is finally being brought to light, we remain angry that it took so long to happen. We raised the issues of for-profit colleges’ access to taxpayers’ money time and again with ministers, but we were ignored at every turn.”

[My bolding]

2009
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/may/21/bogus-college-scam

A Home Office investigation is under way today into a Pakistani gang alleged to have pocketed millions of pounds enrolling hundreds of men from the militant heartland of al-Qaida into bogus UK colleges.

I had to dig in the sources section of Wikipedia to find those links - which I'm not sure were actually the scandal I was looking for - because using a search engine kept returning results of a new student loan scandal that came to light last year: https://aseannow.com/topic/1355961-the-uk-university-fraud-scandal-sham-students-and-fake-degrees/

Sir Humphrey Appleby: A tiny mistake. The sort that anyone can make.

Hacker: A tiny mistake?! [...] Give me an example of a big mistake.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Letting people find out about it.

Frankly, this is the kind of thing that would have resulted in pogroms at any other time in history. Same with the Pakistani rape gangs in the UK; the parallels are striking. Something very drastic needs to happen here, though Minnesotans are not capable of anything like an actual pogrom. Can there be some kind of polite and peaceful alternative that basically achieves the same goals without lots of violence? I can't really see a viable road back from here; the whole system is complicit, locked in, and ideologically committed to its own naivety because the alternative is too terrible to even contemplate.

The consequences for the pakistanis are miniscule compared to the personal satisfaction they enjoyed ruining the children of the enemy and getting paid to do so. So too will be the censure for the Somalians since the US is already a low punishment society that can barely punish the most easy criminals to indict, let alone anyone with a racism shield to deploy. The only way out is unspoken societal segregation, a hope that islands of sanity will be unmolested by the courts for the crime of being too prosperous and capable. As an overall polity there is no appetite to recognize the beast of racialized hate coming from foreign ethnics and less to address it.

Actually wait no there is one way out. Elect a capable non-scammy minority ethnic that is free to name the beast and act upon it. They will have a short but actionable runway to try and right the ship. A decisive window to act can arrest the decline. If the opportunity is squandered or fumbled (Obama capitulating to progressives after the 2nd midterms) then things get permanently worse. So, good luck with that.

The consequences for the pakistanis are miniscule

They got 10+ year jail terms, eventually. (The exceptions were minor players where the only crime they could prove was consensual-looking sex with a 13-16 year old, which normally gets 5 years in England). The rapists who were not British citizens (the vast majority were) have long since been deported.

The Pakistani rape gangs scandal that Musk and right-wing X poasters latched onto is about behaviour which was allowed to continue for far too long in the 1990-2008 period with minimal accountability for the political machines that protected the rapists, not behaviour that is tolerated in 2025. I don't know what is going on between 2nd-generation Pakistanis and chavettes in 2025, but the race/immigration/crime story that right wing media in the UK are pushing nowadays is about crimes committed by more recent humanitarian-route immigrants.

So too will be the censure for the Somalians since the US is already a low punishment society that can barely punish the most easy criminals to indict,

The US is not a low punishment society. You are the most punitive society in the rich world for the criminals who are actually caught and punished - the only countries with a higher incarceration rate are Bukele's El Salvador and countries in the middle of severe political repression. (The US is also one of a small number of countries which still execute people, although not many). You guys are also perfectly capable of punishing black criminals roughly proportionally to the number of crimes they commit. The problem is that the US is a capricious punishment society with third-world quality policing and a somewhat random judicial system such that most criminals (and particularly white-collar criminals) go unpunished. (We are still noticeably better off than you on this point in the UK, although moving in the wrong direction fast since the government decided that the criminal justice system would be shut down first as the welfare state for the old eats the economy).

But that isn't relevant here - the point in Minnesota, as in noughties Rotherham, is that the miscreants are protected by a powerful political machine. Tolerating this kind of thing was, and is, a choice.

The US is a low punishment society because crimes are underinvestigated and criminals are underprosecuted relative to the incidence rate of criminal activity. This is due to both capacity issues but also judicial and societal fiat putting the finger on every side of the scale as much as possible to keep black incarceration as low as possible. That blacks are still overrepresented is a function of how widespread minor criminality is within US society, not some grand conspiracy about blacks being unfairly victimized. FBI crime statistics regarding victim perpetrator filings show that black victimization actually is from black communities who are the first victims of criminal activity, and the clear majority of crime is intraracial. Punishment being proportional within a capacity strained carceral system means a higher absolute number of criminals, especially blacks, roaming free where they should be curtailed.

As for the Pakistani gangs it is for the UK to decide whether its still ok to keep uncovering new rape gangs and expose the sheer scale of predation that was ongoing. Europe and especially the UK are peak embodiment of institutional capture by the narratively invested, with zero appetite to acknowledge the uncomfortable facts of predatory behavioral origination.

Whether UK or US, its the same pathology: institutional narrative capture perpetuating for decades and zero pivot capability. Somalians, like Pakistanis, just learned to play the game on the path trodden by their black forebears. Ok Uk is a bit of a weird one where the predecessor is black caribbean and not African but the end result is the same: a race card played to the hilt.

The US is also one of a small number of countries which still execute people, although not many

Kinda irrelevant to your point, but most executions in the USA happen at the state level, and almost all of those are in southern red states. Federal executions are fairly rare, although Trump has often attempted to clear through the backlog, which makes it look more common.

Executions in the US are spread very unevenly, because it’s a culture wars issue(I suspect more to do with being the only western democracy that uses the death penalty rather than anything in particular about the punishment).

US executions are held up because there is a surprisingly unlimited appetite for judicial reviews and appeals to hold up the process with dubious procedural minutae introduced years after the fact being the reason for blocking. The threshold for evidence getting higher and higher even after sentencing is cause for lawyers to launch appeals nonstop, since there is free money for everyone involved to get in on the grift. Defense, state, judge, prisons, all get to feed at the trough for every death row inmate cycled through appeals. I think this raises the cost of legal+housing for lice without parole vs death row from 2m to 4m or something stupid like that for a 25 year period, and then costs spike if they hit old age.

the only western democracy that uses the death penalty

Some of this hinges on how you define "Western": Japan and Singapore are often counted as such in other areas, but get discounted here, for example.

And Singapore executes an order of magnitude more, per capita, than the US. It is a stretch to call Singapore a democracy, but it is clearly part of "the free world" or "Western Civilisation" in a way which most dictatorships are not.

If current trends continue, eventually a Mexican-American will get elected to major office while openly using the N-word and blaming the Jews for everything.

Rubio is CUBAN, not Mexican. Geez talk about latinx erasure.

I said 'elected to a major office' not 'appointed to every major office'.

Everyone remembers Metternich. Nobody remembers Ferdinand.

You've been warned before about low-effort boo posts, and "I want to kill all my enemies" is definitely not something we encourage here. If you have nothing else to say, better you say nothing.

You've been warned before about low-effort boo posts

When? Is there a way to see? As far as I remember, the only mod interaction was because someone thought to fellow users with "we" is bad.

You know, I opened up all the warnings on your mod record (five of them), prepared to link to them, and then realized the following:

  1. I do not believe you do not remember your previous warnings.
  2. I definitely do not believe that pointing out your previous warnings will lead to you saying "Oh, right."

Rather, I am absolutely certain that pointing out your previous warnings will lead to you arguing that (a) they were unjustified; (b) this warning is unjustified; (c) this situation is different.

You were warned in the past, you are being warned now, stop doing this.

I expected an answer like "at this url click so and so button and you can see them"

You technically can do that on this page, but it would require a lot of scrolling.

Why are you affecting this tone. Surely you've mistaken me for someone else, because I've had an account since September 2022, which suggests the last warning was 8 months ago.

arguing

I would like to ask when I've argued with any mod (I try to never argue but only add color/details), but you began this interaction assuming insincerity. I didn't even defend my above comment, I was just confused that it wasn't the first such one I've made. Worse, the thing I thought was a warning with we didn't have a warning at all...

That this is all organized by Somali gangs, with the gang leaders bringing retribution on any family that doesn't go along with it. Investigators like David also get threatened with violence.

Dang.

I might have to retract my this isn't a violent mafia statement.

The feds need to come purge the entire state government of Minnesota on charges of racketeering and voter fraud.

I'm genuinely wondering if its possible for that particular electorate, even if all elections are fair and accurately done, to muster up the anger that would be necessary to impose accountability, remove the bad actors (in government, I'm not even talking about the Somalis), and reshape things to mitigate fraud issues going forward.

My model of the modal Minnesotan would say they're not quite capable of that sort of drastic actions, they'd rather keep the stiff upper lip and make moderate adjustments and hope things get better.

Can "The Minnesotan begin to hate?" Seems unlikely.

I did a lot of digging in Washington State daycares the other week. Washington has better public-facing financial tools. There is a big database of all government payouts for the last 6 months. You can go down the list of DYCF payments, stop at every company with “Home Daycare” or “Family Child Care” in their name that gets a 5-figure payout each month, cross-reference the name with the Washington State Daycare registry, and see that every single one has a Somali name as the primary contact. I must have found at least a dozen places run out of a medium-sized suburban home licensed for 12 kids that were each raking in $40,000 a month. Even assuming these were legitimate businesses running at full capacity, that would be over $3000 per child per month, for daycare, run out of someone’s basement.

Hope you continue and expand posting on this work. We need more investigators and fewer Takes.

You can see the base payment rates for Licensed Centers from Washington's Working Connections Child Care here. Depending on exactly where you are (region map) that 40k is very possible. If you took care of 12 infants (<1 year old) for a full day, for 30 days, in King County, the state would pay you ~$41k for that month. The rates are fairly similar for licensed family homes. You can also get an increase above those base rates if your childcare entity is part of the Early Achievers program. Family Home and Center EA rates.

Here I am paying for daycare like a chump while illegals live on the dole and also get daycare for free for unlimited kids. Meanwhile actual hardworking parents have to pay their own way fully. This kind of thing is dysgenic as af.

It’s almost scarier if it turns out these are all technically legit businesses and the government was just this bad at not getting Dutch Booked.

Sure, you could take care of your own baby like a chump, or you could let your buddy take care of your baby and do him a $3000/month solid.

I don't know how it works in America, but you can mind children out of your own home in Ireland so long as you stick to the regulations (these have been tightened up recently, before that you could mind mind kids in your own home, say for a neighbour, and they could pay you what you both agreed on, which generally would not be declared as taxable income, hence the regulating):

A childminder is a person who runs a childminding service looking after other people’s children (under the age of 15 years) for at least 2 hours per day, in the childminder’s own home. This definition does not apply to people who care for children in the children’s own home (such as nannies and au pairs). Childminders work by themselves and do not employ any other people to assist them with the children they are caring for.

This now requires that childminders working out of their own home register with a local committee, undergo training, will have inspections carried out, and will need to keep records and make sure tax affairs are in order. There are small grants available, but you can't apply for government funding as such (that goes to professional and community childminding services and day cares).

Now, of course you could still pay a relative or neighbour to look after your kid with their own and nobody needs to register or undergo formal training, but if anyone is minding more than three kids not of their own family in their home for money, they have to comply with the new regulations.

What's being described in the links sounds like they were formally set up as businesses (even if de facto it's someone's home and they let the kids run around unsupervised), and of course there are always opportunities for scams and fraud, or even just "we charge parents full-whack fees, most of that goes into our pockets and what gets spent on the kids is buttons". I've heard that informally at second-hand where I work, allegedly passed on by one of the inspectors; one of the perks (for parents) of us being a community service which is not-for-profit and government-funded is that we do get inspected out the wazoo by several bodies and have to have paperwork backing up every last thing, so they keep track of what got spent where by whom on what. No real opportunity to shove 80% of funding into our own pockets, unlike private operators where (by what I was told the inspector says) you can see it when you go into the services even though they're charging parents market rates. Or to have fake kids enrolled and claim the funding, but no such kid exists (in fact, we could fill the spaces available twice over, such is demand, so no need for ghost enrolments unless you're scamming).

Several years back there was some right-wing woman that ran a blog and realized this particular (smaller-scale) fraud. Sign up with the other SAHM down the street, "officially" you take care of the other person's baby but the state never checked, and get a nice payout for doing what you were going to do for free.

Wish I could remember her name and track that down. Alas.

It’s almost scarier if it turns out these are all technically legit businesses and the government was just this bad at not getting Dutch Booked.

Some of them are technically legit, and the people who work in child sex crimes units will agree that it is scarier. Although, not so much because the government is getting bilked.

Some of them are technically legit, and the people who work in child sex crimes units will agree that it is scarier.

Yeah. Here's a lovely story that demonstrates that at least the Somalians are (allegedly) only screwing the state government, not the kids:

A tip from gardaí has led to the chief executive of a childcare company in California being arrested and charged with 16 counts of sexually exploiting six children in his care.

Miguel Adrian Gonzalez, a 28-year-old from west Los Angeles who is the chief executive of a childcare programme and a private babysitter, was charged with a series of child abuse offences on November 25.

Gonzalez was charged with two counts of obtaining custody of a minor with the intent to produce child sex abuse imagery, seven counts of production of child abuse material, two counts of distribution of child abuse material, three counts of receipt of child abuse material and two counts of possession of child abuse material.

According to a court filing from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent based in LA, she received information from the HSI office in Kentucky in September that implicated Gonzalez in enticing an 11-year-old male victim, called MV-1 in the court filings, to produce child sexual abuse material on Snapchat.

The HSI Kentucky office received information leading to the identification of the victim from HSI’s cyber crimes centre, which had itself been notified of the existence of the material by the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau.

...While privately messaging PHOENIXV on Snapchat, the boy was instructed to send nude photos and videos or PHOENIXV “would come to MV-1’s home and harm him”.

The boy was sent his address by PHOENIXV as part of this threat. The PHOENIXV user then proceeded to instruct the boy to produce child sex abuse material while calling him “daddy”. The LA agent says investigators were able to establish that Gonzalez controlled the accounts using the PHOENIXV username.

A US attorney’s office statement issued in November said that its complaint against Gonzalez alleges that from 2021 to 2025 the childcare provider and CEO of Let’s Play LA LLC “produced sexually explicit images of children in his care or supervision”. It said Gonzalez also sexually abused at least one minor victim.

“In October 2023 and May 2024, Gonzalez texted the parents of two minor victims, each of them 6-year-old boys at the time, and offered to obtain custody or control of the two victims through his babysitting services, knowing that each victim would be portrayed in a visual depiction engaging in sexually explicit conduct. These requests led to two instances in which Gonzalez produced child sexual abuse material (CSAM).”

It is not uncommon at all. Other than the standard fare of boyfriends and stepdads, a very common scenario is that the son/brother/spouse of a woman running one of these "home child care" places just abuses several of the kids.

Well, you could let your friend take care of your baby while you take care of your hers and each make $3000... like a chump. Or 12 people could register 12 daycares and each "take care of" all 12 babies for $33000 each.

Babies, much like tech platforms, have close to 0 marginal cost and scale nearly infinitely

Now that's American innovation

I guess one limitation is it does have to be your "buddy" (at least, non-relative). The page describing the program has an exception so that you cannot receive subsidized childcare payments for your children during hours when you yourself are providing childcare to a child you are related to that is paid for with subsidies but it is worded kind of confusingly:

Note: In-home providers who are relatives and are paid child care subsidies to care for children receiving WCCC benefits, may not receive those benefits for their children during the hours in which they provide subsidized child care.

On the same page they are specific that a child's "parent" cannot be a subsidized provider but it seems like other family members could be:

Someone other than the child's biological parent, step-parent, adoptive parent, legal guardian, in-loco parentis, or spouse of any of these individuals

Luckily the law doesn't recognize muslim polygamous marriages as "wives" !

I've seen speculation that the polygamous habits of Somalians are why this particular grift is so lucrative for them. One man with four wives worth of children could be raking in a middle-class lifestyle just watching the kids.

I don't know about the in-actuality familial habits of American Somalis to evaluate whether this is a good explaination or just made-up.

Realistically, i don't think that's the direct means of the fraud. It's just another way they form an insular, clannish community that trusts itself to do organized crime against the rest of us. Most of the daycares seem to be making up fake kids, and maybe occasionally bussing in some kids if they need evidence.

I'm confused. I have a friend that put his kid in one of these suburban daycares (it's legit) and as far as I'm aware it's costing him thousands per month. I looked it up and they are also getting thousands per kid from the government. I know childcare is expensive, but it's not double dip into government's pocket and regular person's pocket for something like $5k total per kid expensive, so what's going on?

Again, no idea how the USA works, but there are various subsidised childcare schemes under the Irish government. Depending on your circumstances (e.g. are you lone parent, low income, etc.) and the age of the child, some parents will pay full fees and some parents will get a subsidised place (i.e. government funding for the kid while parent pays some percentage of the fee). Pre-school children are eligible for free care for 3 hours per day x 5 days per week x 38 weeks in the year. If the child stays longer, then the parents have to pay for the extra hours.

It's confusing to work out, so I'm glad I don't handle it. Parents have to register their child online and all the associated paperwork then gets processed, and the childcare service then submits how many hours a day and days a week each particular child attends. There are also ratios of how many staff to children per room, depending on age of children and how many in the room.

At the same time, the government is also recently increasing pay rates for childcare workers. So there's the juggling act of "how much do I pay the qualified staff plus running costs, versus what I can charge parents and get under funding" for operators. For the less scrupulous, that makes it a temptation to understaff the premises or hire less qualified/unqualified staff or cut corners while, let us say, maximising revenue streams. We don't have anything like the Minnesota scandal here (as yet), but that doesn't mean that some mini-scandal can't happen in future.

At 20/days/month and 8/hrs/day, that comes out to about... $31.25/hr per kid.

I'm realizing that I genuinely have no idea what a price is for childcare.

Is that high or low?

Remember, out of that you are paying:

(1) Staff wages (including pension contributions, taxes, etc.)
(2) Running costs of the premises (heat/light/phone/insurance/maintenance, etc.) Rent as well if you don't own your own premises.
(3) Are you feeding the kids? Then the cost of buying in meals pre-cooked (if you don't prepare them on-site) or buying food to be cooked
(4) Equipment and materials for the rooms (everything from toys, mats, furniture, books, art supplies, etc.)
(5) Cleaning and hygiene supplies, anything else you can think of
(6) Unexpected expenses (oh crap, cold snap, we're running the heating all day long at full blast; yikes, the sinks in the bathrooms fell off the wall; hey, what's this leak in the roof?)
(7) Little treats: Easter eggs, Christmas presents, trips to the cinema etc.

Then after all that, if you're a private operator, make some profit.

Staffing requirements usually put 4 infants to 1 caretaker. At a legit facility rent admin and janitorial staff wipe out even a fully subsidized package, without accounting for incidentals and capex. Probably need to hit at least 12 infants to start breaking even, and then your capex soars too. Daycares are not automatic money printers because kids are delicate and staffing is difficult.

So the easy scam is to just put pretend kids in and unqualified staff in place with fake credentials if ever interrogated. No auditor will investigate on their own and the local vote boss just says ' I will take care of it'

When the govt was not a fat cow worth milking taking care of it meant having to offer a sacrificial scalp to the other local bosses. Now the govt is this depersonalized money printer far away, and its also run by whites who are not only the enemy but also one that are self declaring the nobility of self impoverishment. Why would you deny them the opportunity to feel good.

But aren’t these payments made to an in home daycare? That is, there is no rental cost. Sure there is some capex but that’s relatively minimal. And with 12 kids, the admin shouldn’t be too bad.

Let’s say you hire three people and you handle all of the admin. You pay each helper 6k a month (72k a year). Let’s say you spend 5k on capex / insurance a month. That’s still 10k left over.

And I think those expenses are being generous.

People complain about the cost of childcare but if it's properly licensed, employs qualified staff, and is a decent place for the kids, it's expensive to run.

If it's cheap, either it's Neighbour Sally looking after her two kids and your two for money under the table in her own home, or it's not someplace you want your kids to be for hours per day.

If it's 12 kids for in-home daycare, then they are supposed to be registered and all associated admin etc. should be performed. Doing it on the cheap means shoddiness all round. Don't state old age homes in the USA have terrible reputations, precisely because it is done on the cheap?

Looking it up online, for the USA it depends on which state the premises is located in, but:

In-Home Child Care Some states and territories may not require certain in-home child care programs to have a license if they meet the following criteria:

  • Are related to the children they care for
  • Care for only a few children, as defined by the state or territory
  • Provide care occasionally for only a few hours a day

In these instances, states may consider the in-home provider to be legally exempt from needing a child care license. As such, with the exception of in-home child care providers participating in the state or territory’s child care subsidy program, license-exempt in-home child care providers do not need to meet the following health and safety requirements to provide care:

  • Basic health and safety requirements, including comprehensive background checks and monitoring
  • Training standards, such as first aid and CPR training

In California, for example, you can have 14 children in your home if you have an assistant, but there are regulations around this. Paying cheap rates to unqualified staff and skimping on insurance etc. is not going to work unless you're doing all this under the table or are very, very sure you will never be inspected to make sure you're compliant, and that no parent is going to complain:

1597.531. (a) All family day care homes for children shall maintain in force either liability insurance covering injury to clients and guests in the amount of at least one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per occurrence and three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) in the total annual aggregate, sustained on account of the negligence of the licensee or its employees, or a bond in the aggregate amount of three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000). In lieu of the liability insurance or the bond, the family day care home may maintain a file of affidavits signed by each parent with a child enrolled in the home which meets the requirements of this subdivision. The affidavit shall state that the parent has been informed that the family day care home does not carry liability insurance or a bond according to standards established by the state. If the provider does not own the premises used as the family day care home, the affidavit shall also state that the parent has been informed that the liability insurance, if any, of the owner of the property or the homeowners’ association, as appropriate, may not provide coverage for losses arising out of, or in connection with, the operation of the family day care home, except to the extent that the losses are caused by, or result from, an action or omission by the owner of the property or the homeowners’ association, for which the owner of the property or the homeowners’ association would otherwise be liable under the law. These affidavits shall be on a form provided by the department and shall be reviewed at each licensing inspection.

So the easy scam is to just put pretend kids in and unqualified staff in place with fake credentials if ever interrogated. No auditor will investigate on their own and the local vote boss just says ' I will take care of it'

Checking staff genuinely have the paper qualifications they are supposed to have is very easy and the government does in fact do it if it isn't deliberately tolerating fraud. Part of the problem with non-fraudulent daycare costs is that the IQ floor for getting the paper qualifications is higher than the IQ floor for keeping a 1-year-old alive, so a system which tries to pay the going rate for keeping a 1-year old alive can't hire staff with the legally-required paper qualifications.

Depends on the age of the child and the market in question. For late preschoolers in red states(where there are few government subsidies to distort the market) thats very high; for younger kids- especially babies- it might be average, especially in a blue state where the government subsidizes demand.

AI is telling me that staff to kid ratio in my state and in the kid's age group is 1 to 12, so one staff generates $375/hr. Without looking it up, I know for a fact staff are not taking even third of that in their pocket. I know there's a lot more expenses going into this beyond just paying staff, but it's a home daycare for a few dozens of preschool kids that requires parents to even pack their lunch and its clearing $100k/m+ in revenue from both government and customers. Why are stay-at-home moms not coordinating setting up their own 'private daycares' and rack in thousands from the government? Sounds like an easy solution to the question of whether the mom should quit her job to raise the kid.

its clearing $100k/m+ in revenue from both government and customers

What insurance premiums are they paying? What is their average utility bill for electricity, for heating, for water, etc.? Are they paying rent on the premises? Staff are not getting one third of the $375/hr in take-home pay, but have you considered the gross pay not the net (which includes tax etc.)? Maybe US taxes work differently and there isn't the equivalent of PAYE, but employers must have to pay payroll taxes of some sort. That's the minimum staff ratio, but in practice you would want to have 2 to 12 (so e.g. if one staff member is dealing with taking kids to the bathroom, or on a break, there's someone in the room looking after the rest of the kids). Parents have to provide packed lunches, but does the daycare provide snacks and drinks (something that can be part of regulations, though if it really is run out of someone's home, maybe not required)?

It's not simply a matter of "aha, here is a sackful of money that I can just cream off" unless it's a scam. And as has been noted in different comments, you can't get money from the government for looking after your own kids in your own home. If Susie and Betty and Jane arrange that Susie minds Betty's kids, Betty minds Jane's kids, and Jane minds Susie's kids so they can apply for government funding, that may not work as they'll have to explain why Susie can't mind her own kids if she can mind Betty's kids etc. It's really not just as simple as "rack in thousands from the government". You have to apply for this funding and that can mean a lot of hoops to jump through, which is why cases like Minnesota do require co-ordination and corruption to succeed on the large scale.

I considered running a private daycare when I started motherhood but I didn't own my own home. Also the initial expenses to meet all regulations. Also 3k per kid seems off to me. Admittedly it was a few years ago but back then it was more like 2k per kid under 2 and 1k per kid above three.

Though looking at these numbers, it does sound like those would have been surmountable barriers. But I suspect there's some scamming to get to the 5k/month number.

I'm guessing the government only pays $5k/mo for special needs kids, even if they're not actually special needs.

Seems extremely high to me. Daycare for our toddler is $90 a day, and that isn’t some ghetto “Learing Center” full of Somalians either, which I expect would be substantially cheaper.

Which is about $1900 a month, and babies are more expensive than toddlers. Seems entirely consistent with the other numbers we are seeing.

Why would you expect it to be cheaper- I'd expect them to charge the government the highest rate it's willing to pay.

Thanks, that's a good resource. I tried searching Ohio but couldn't find anything, mostly because they didn't have clear public-facing info for this sort of thing (and admittedly I didn't look too hard).

I really wonder though, if it's just Daycare, or how many other industries are corrupted by this sort of fraud.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats