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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31437 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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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.

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