Tag: Fraud

Mischief in Minnesota

It is said that there are two sides to every story. That is generally the case, but when there is some contradiction in the facts reported, it stands to reason that some elements of one or both sides must be false. Occasionally, one side is almost entirely true, and the other almost entirely untrue, whether through some misapprehension or deception by the advocate of that side. Such seems to be the case in the regrettable death of Renee Nicole Good.

According to the Democrats and their allies in the media, Renee Nicole Good was a loving wife and mother who had just dropped her child off at school. She inexplicably found herself in the middle of a confrontation between ICE agents and protesters. One of these masked agents demanded she leave her vehicle. Since Ms. Good had no idea who these people were, she panicked and attempted to flee the scene, whereupon an agent shot into the side window of her SUV, hitting her in the head and killing her.  This was an act of cold-blooded murder. Therefore, ICE must be disbanded before more innocent Americans are slaughtered.

According to Republicans and conservatives, Renee Nicole Good was a professional activist. She was on the scene for the specific purpose of impeding ICE and making it impossible for them to enforce federal immigration law. She blocked them with her vehicle. When Ms. Good was asked to leave her vehicle, she refused. Instead, she backed up, and with the urging of her lesbian “wife”, she deliberately hit an agent. The agent fired into the windshield of the SUV in self-defense, killing her. This was a justifiable shooting.

I am certainly biased, but on the whole, I support the latter interpretation. I do not believe the leftist propaganda that depicts ICE as Trump’s Gestapo. I do not imagine they just go around shooting people at random any more than I suppose that police officers around the country go out of their way to shoot unarmed Black men just because they are racist. The agent in question may have panicked. He may not have needed to fire his weapon. But I have no doubt he sincerely believed his life was threatened.

And, in fact, videos taken at the scene, especially from his own cell phone, show that Ms. Good did deliberately aim her SUV directly at him. It does not matter if she was only driving at 5 miles per hour. She was accelerating. A car at that speed looks threatening when viewed from the front. It can still hurt if it hits. And he had no way to know if she would attempt to hit other people.

But this is all a relatively minor matter. The more important question that I am concerned with is this: why don’t Democrats want federal immigration laws enforced? Democrats declare the cities and states they control as sanctuaries and refuse to assist federal authorities in enforcing immigration laws. When ICE is then obliged to send agents on the ground to implement these laws, Democrats incite violence against them. They encourage violent resistance to federal law enforcement. They compare ICE to the Nazis gathering Jews for the death camps. They characterize the criminals ICE arrests as poor refugees who ICE is cruelly kidnapping off the streets. The victims of these criminals get no such sympathy. Why? Why do the Democrats side with illegal immigrants and criminals against honest American citizens? What do they gain from these policies?

One theory popular on the right is that they are attempting to replace the population. Many Democratic policies have become fairly unpopular among native born Americans. Therefore, the Democrats need to import more tractable voters from abroad. These foreign voters lack the American love of liberty and the Constitution and are more apt to support socialism and authoritarianism. Since they have arrived in this country illegally but have been granted citizenship, or at any rate the vote, by Democrats, they will feel gratitude for the party that has enabled them.

I think there is some truth to this. About twenty years ago, numerous books and articles were written about the emerging Democratic majority resulting from America’s rapidly growing Hispanic population. Obviously, if this were the case, the Democrats would have good reason to increase the number of Hispanics. They would certainly want to allow large numbers of Hispanics into the country, legally or illegally, and earn their gratitude by granting them citizenship.

But I do not believe that is the only reason. For one thing, the Democrats still have a large number of native born Americans willing to vote for them. The Democrats have lost the White working class, and much of the middle class, but the highly educated professionals are still willing to vote for them, as well as the African-Americans. As for the Hispanics, they are a highly diverse population, and many do not care for the woke policies of contemporary Democrats. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, Hispanics here legally are not thrilled about opening the borders.

I wonder if it was entirely a coincidence that the protests against ICE have been ramped up following the uncovering of massive amounts of fraud in the Somali community of Minneapolis. I do not believe that I am disparaging the intelligence of the Somalis involved when I suggest that, as relative newcomers, ignorant of American laws and customs, they might have required a lot of help in setting up their fraudulent day care centers and navigating Minnesota’s state bureaucracy. Certainly, state officials, up to the Governor’s office, must have been aware of and complicit in the fraud.

I suspect the fraud that Nick Shirly revealed in Minnesota is only a minuscule fraction of the malfeasance that remains to be found throughout the country. I think that we will learn that illegal immigrant communities are involved in such schemes as pawns in a web of fraud that includes the leaders of the Democratic Party in every blue state. Naturally, they do not want their minions discovered and deported.

Whatever the reasons, by defying federal authority by refusing to allow ICE to enforce federal immigration laws, Tim Walz and the other blue state governors are leading their states and the country down a dangerous path. The last time states claimed the authority to nullify federal laws, it did not end well for anyone.  Channeling John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis may improve Tampon Tim Walz’s popularity among his deranged supporters, but it is not helping matters in Minnesota or the country.

Phony Psychic

In Gulliver’s Travels Gulliver describes the customs and laws of the tiny Lilliputians, and mentions that they consider fraud to be a worse crime than theft.

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.  I remember, when I was once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed.

We generally regard violent crimes as worse than non violent crimes like fraud, since with non-violent crimes no one is physically harmed, but I think I agree with the Lilliputian view. A murder or theft might perhaps injure or kill a handful of people in his criminal career, but a swindler undermines the bonds of trust that holds a society together. Any society more complex than a band of hunter-gatherers depends on people being able to trust that other people, including strangers they will never meet, are doing their part to keep things working. Societies in which these bonds are weak or in which each person feels they can only rely on their own relatives or members of their own subgroup tend not to work very well. The con artist takes advantage of people’s’ trust and so weakens the ability of people to continue to trust one another. As Gulliver puts it, commerce depends on trust and if fraud is not regarded seriously enough, the honest are at the mercy of the knaves, and worse, the honest are obliged to become knaves in order to protect themselves.

In my opinion, the lowest of the low as far, as the fraudulent are concerned, are those people who take advantage of grieving persons who have a loved one missing by pretending to be able to determine whether the missing person is alive and where they can be found using their purported psychic powers, or even worse, impede police investigations by providing tips allegedly gained through their clairvoyance. It is with particular pleasure, then, that I present this video of one of these con artists getting something of what she deserves.

 

Here is the story that comes with this video.

Do you believe that psychics have the ability to assist families and the police in finding missing persons or solving murder cases?

Each year, countless desperate families turn to so-called psychics looking for information and leads. Sadly, psychic detectives are often selling false hope to the anguished and distraught instead of actually helping them unravel the mysteries.

Psychic detectives are known to prey on victims’ families, using vague, contradictory and useless information to convince them of their validity. They hardly ever offer answers or comfort to the grieving, sending police on an endless manhunt.

In the video above, Inside Edition exposes a phony psychic and her abilities.

When Laurie McQuary is asked about a missing girl, she claims that her “sixth sense” told her that she was brutally murdered. Interestingly enough, the photo she was shown was actually a childhood photo of the show’s Chief Investigative Correspondent, Lisa Guerrero.

As you can imagine, McQuary had no idea she was about to be exposed, and immediately excused herself from the interview after playing dumb.

I don’t much care for the description of this woman as a “phony psychic” since that seems to imply that there are real psychics out there, but perhaps I shouldn’t complain too much, since the reporter states more than once that there are no known cases in which a psychic detective was able to solve a case. I am glad Inside Edition ran this story, and I wish there were more like it. All too often, supposed psychics are promoted and celebrated in the media and not debunked, getting their own television shows, or appearing on talk shows in which their abilities are accepted without question or challenge. Psychics are good entertainment and no one seems to want to spoil the fun by actually examining their claims, even if they are cruelly taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable.

I wonder why these psychics are never prosecuted for fraud. It would seem to be an easy case for any competent prosecutor. These people are making a claim that they possess a power that they do not actually have and they are asking for money to use this power. How is this not fraud and why are they not punished?

Perhaps there is a certain reluctance to punish psychics because it seems to be too close to religious persecution. If a psychic can be prosecuted, why not a faith healer? And then, why not any religious leader who proclaims himself a  prophet?  I think a clear distinction can be made between matters of faith and practices that are fraudulent. If someone preaches that Jesus is the only way to get to Heaven, this is strictly a matter of faith. That preacher’s claims cannot be verified and it is likely that he believes it. If a preacher states that prayer can cure illnesses, that also is a matter of faith. If, however, the preacher states that he can heal people and will do so for a donation, that is closer to being fraud. The ability to instantly cure diseases and injuries at a prayer meeting can be verified and if it can be shown that he cannot actually perform such miraculous cures, the preacher is a fraud. If someone claims to be a psychic who can speak to the dead, that may also be a matter of faith, but if the psychic claims to know the fate of a missing person, and it is shown that he does not, in fact, have that knowledge, than he is a fraud.

If we can’t prosecute psychics, I wish that at least there would be more shows that expose them for the charlatans they are, and maybe better education in critical thinking. It would be the least anyone could do.

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