Criminal Mastermind Lived in Mom’s Basement. WSJ: ObamaCare Is Fraud Mecca. Somalis. D.C. Nasty to National Guard Members. TDS Invades Chick Lit. And More
How did an “almost autistic-like” thirty-something who lives in his mom’s basement pass for a criminal mastermind?
It turns out that the mysterious J6 Pipe Bomber, who fits this description, seemingly eluded the Biden FBI for five years. He was arrested last week. Today, the New York Post’s Miranda Devine ponders this incongruity:
The arrest of the alleged J6 pipe bomber just lumps mystery on top of mystery.
What we know from court documents and media reports since his arrest Thursday is that suspect Brian Cole Jr., is a black, 30-year-old loner who lives in his mom’s basement in the middle-class suburb of Woodbridge, Va., a 20-minute drive from Washington, DC. According to his family, he is borderline autistic, and incapable of such a crime….
[FBI Director Kash] Patel hinted on Friday at a reason the FBI under [former Director Christopher]Wray during the Biden administration may not have wanted to solve the case: “intentional negligence.”
Devine proposes a reason behind the alleged “intentional negligence”:
Demonizing Trump and his supporters and extracting every morsel of political capital out of J6 was the priority of Joe Biden and his congressional hatchet woman Nancy Pelosi. Wray, the consummate political animal who wanted to stay on as FBI director, tailored his response to suit.
Nothing would be permitted to interrupt the false narrative that J6 was an “insurrection” worse than 9/11 committed by “Ultra-MAGA,” “white supremacist domestic terrorists” who “killed four cops.” None of that was true, of course.
You’ll have heard that CNN’s Jake Tapper gamely insisted that Cole is “a white man.” He is not, but that would have fit better with the Biden administration’s popular “white supremacy” motif. Cole is black.
Not to dispute Brian Cole Jr.’s autism diagnosis, but the rise in such diagnoses may have an unsuspected cause: welfare fraud. That’s Allysia Finley’s diagnosis in her highly recommended column in the Wall Street Journal:
Diagnosis rates of autism among children have more than tripled over the past 15 years. One reason, which Minnesota’s welfare scandal lays bare with shocking details, is Medicaid fraud and abuse.
Medicaid pays healthcare providers big bucks to diagnose and treat children with autism—sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a month for a single child. Yet states rarely verify that kids who are diagnosed actually meet the medical criteria for the disorder or that they get appropriate treatment from qualified specialists.
The result: Children covered by Medicaid or the government-run Children’s Health Insurance Program are 2.5 times as likely as those with private coverage to be diagnosed with autism. …
In Minnesota, the number of autism providers soared 700%, and payments to them increased 3,000% between 2018 and 2023. According to a federal indictment, Asha Farhan Hassan set up the ABA therapy provider Smart Therapy, which employed young relatives with no formal education beyond a high school education as “behavioral technicians.”
Ms. Hassan and her business partners allegedly recruited parents by paying them monthly kickbacks of up to $1,500 a child. She worked with a licensed therapist “to get the recruited child qualified for autism services. There was no child that Smart Therapy was not able to get qualified for autism services,” according to the indictment….
Government largess is making disability and indolence a way of life for too many Americans, including veterans.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was videotaped supporting one of the fraudsters, says the real victims are members of the Somali community. Ms. Must bets that Rep. Omar would agree with USA TODAY columnist Sara Paqueno, who says that “Somali Americans are throwing Trump’s ‘garbage’ back at him.” The Somali community is politically relevant, and Minnesota office seekers face a real dilemma. None of this is good for former Veep hopeful Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz. Alas, poor Tim has once again become the butt of cruel jokes (here, here, and here). Not so funny, Jason Rantz charges that Democrats built a public assistance system designed to be robbed.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota scandal is the starting point for a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “ObamaCare Is a Mecca for Fraud”:
The Minnesota Medicaid grift illustrates how open-ended government welfare can easily become an inducement for fraud. A new Government Accountability Office report finds the pandemic-era sweetened ObamaCare subsidies are also ripe for gaming….
In 2023 one Social Security number was used to apply for more than 125 policies. Perhaps this was identity theft, but it’s also possible brokers submitted fake Social Security numbers to enroll ineligible or phantom people in plans. Brokers earn more in commissions from insurers if they enroll more people in ObamaCare. …
Using Census Bureau data, Mr. Blase estimates that about 6.4 million people this year were improperly enrolled in subsidized ObamaCare plans, costing taxpayers $27 billion. He has also found that about 40% of enrollees in plans fully subsidized by the government filed no medical claims. GAO’s report suggests many may not be real people. Others may have employer coverage and been enrolled by brokers without their knowledge.
Meanwhile, former physician and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy yesterday discussed his plan to reduce the cost of health insurance on “Face the Nation” and warned that the Trump administration’s possible new guidelines on hepatitis B vaccinations for infants would be “a mistake.” PJ Media’s Catherine Salgado likes the potential new Hep B guidelines.
New York’s new socialist Mayor hasn’t even moved into Gracie Mansion, but he’s already giving New Yorkers helpful tips on how to resist ICE. It came in the form of a video, released yesterday. And congrats to Mamdani’s newly appointed education adviser, Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, an ardent admirer of fabled cop killer Assata Shakur; Assata took up residence in the idyllic paradise called Cuba after her prison break in the U.S. Kiddies will relish learning about Assata.
Ms. Must always remembers to thank the National Guard members who are making D.C. feel so much safer. Apparently, this isn’t a universal social norm. “Hate Thy Neighbor: How Progressive D.C. Treats National Guardsmen with Contempt” is the headline of a Free Press story by Mary Eberstadt. “Before Sarah Beckstrom was shot and killed in an ambush in the capital, she was spat at by locals,” Eberstadt notes.
In “Immigration Gone Wild,” Victor Davis Hanson considers how we got into this mess:
Was it misplaced idealism to welcome in millions of the world’s poorest, who would soon make it even more difficult for the nation’s citizen poor to find affordable housing and health care?
Was the agenda to create future dependencies and constituencies for an otherwise ossified Democratic Party?
Or was it an effort to ensure, in DEI terms, that the oppressed and victimized would outgrow the inert white oppressors and victimizers?
There’s no escape. In “Tribe Mentality,” Naomi Schaefer Riley writes in the Free Beacon that even chick lit has been invaded by politics:
The past few years have seen the almost unprecedented intrusion of politics into chick lit. It seems no novel about the life of wives or mothers can be complete without the occasional diatribe about systemic racism or Donald Trump or the genocide launched against transgendered people. For someone who is looking for a little escapism, the proverbial beach read is no longer a place to find it. But just as these authors are clearly under the sway of their political environment—or at least virtue signaling to show that they don’t just care about romance or drama in the PTA—they are also influencing the political environment as well. And they can use the broader audience they attract to plant information about niche ideological hobby horses.
Chicks. (Oh, Loosen Up.) When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green went on “60 Minutes” last night, she and CBS veteran Leslie Stahl, alas, did not hit it off. Not the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Whither Ukraine? The president’s son says the president could just walk away, according to Politico.
