Scott Johnson, co-founder of and contributor to PowerLineblog.com, brings together a remarkable and concise (though stopping short of the root cause) explanation of everything surrounding the recent fraud scandals going on in Minnesota. In Learning From Minnesota’s Somali Fraud Scandal which is in the January 2026 edition of Imprimis, the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College, Johnson outlines how things seemed to spin out of control.
His conclusion – that “ a leadership class that has either forgotten or no longer takes seriously the idea that public office is a public trust” – misses the real thing that is happening (and not just in Minnesota or a specific population); that is, the “public” itself has changed, and public offices are doing just what their public wants: giving us what we want. Corruption is no longer disqualifying.
And that is why you should read Johnson’s piece. It is a picture of everything that has happened over the years to change a moral public to an immoral public, which now includes immoral politicians and everyone in between.
Minnesota is not the story. It is a case study. The real question is whether democratic systems reflect the moral strength — or weakness — of the populations they serve.
How Johnson’s Diagnosis Stops Short
Johnson’s diagnosis is inadequate when he states “Leadership has forgotten that public office is a public trust.” In fact, the public itself has changed. Leadership may not be betraying the public so much as reflecting it. When corruption fails to disqualify officials, something in the moral expectations of the electorate has shifted.
The officials therefore aren’t failing – they’re succeeding at serving a constituency that expects:
- Minimal scrutiny of benefit claims
- Prioritization of “access” over verification
- Accusations of racism to trump fraud concerns
- Distribution of money with few questions asked
- Protection of fraudsters from consequences
In such a system, officials who reflect prevailing expectations are rewarded, and those who insist on strict enforcement are punished. When the public becomes morally compromised, democratic responsiveness means officials will faithfully execute that corruption.
This is a controversial claim – and the hardest to prove with data. I can show you $200 billion in PPP fraud (see Side Bar). I can show you Minnesota’s documented cases. But can I prove ‘the public has changed’?
Not with a chart or graph.
But ask yourself: Could what’s happening in Minnesota happen in the Minnesota of 1950? Or even 1990? Could fraud reach billions while officials looked away? Could identity politics trump investigation? Could taxpayer-funded hotel stays in Nairobi be dismissed with a shrug?
Something fundamental has shifted. Is it institutional, moral, or both?
Giving Them What They Want
So if a morally compromised public has officials giving them what they want (i.e., fraud), it reframes everything in Johnson’s essay. In a moral society:
- Public wants roads → officials build roads
- Public wants safety → officials provide policing
- Public wants education → officials fund schools
But in Minnesota and perhaps elsewhere:
But when voters consistently reward access over accountability, speed over scrutiny, and identity claims over investigation, officials adapt accordingly.
The Result: Officials are being responsive to a corrupted electorate and become themselves corrupt.
The “Fraud-Infested World” Concept
The real examination is about what is happening with money, which is needed for fraud. Fraud is defined as “wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.” But the basis of being able to have financial or personal gain is always money. You can’t have fraud unless you have a fraudster – a crook, and money. In other words, someone has to instigate the action, the theft, the whatever.
I’m suggesting a stable equilibrium of corruption exists:
- Supply side: Weak controls, minimal enforcement, easy money
- Demand side: Crooks get access to that money without scrutiny
- Political market clearing: Officials who provide exactly that
- Self-reinforcing: Anyone who tries to enforce rules gets voted out or called racist
This is qualitatively different from incompetence or neglect. It’s a functioning system that has simply adopted corruption as its operating principle.
The charge in saying this is that it’s ‘racist’ or ‘anti-immigrant.’
But notice what is not being claimed: that any ethnic group is inherently more criminal or less moral.
What is being pointed out is that when you combine (a) weak institutional controls, (b) easy money, and (c) when new populations enter rapidly into systems already weakened by loose oversight, and when civic norms are not actively reinforced, fraud risk increases.
This happened with PPP. Postal workers, nurses, investment advisors – native-born Americans all – defrauded the system when opportunity arose. The variable isn’t ethnicity. It’s the combination of opportunity and the absence of shared commitment to civic virtue.
Minnesota’s case is distinctive only in scale and the particular populations involved. The pattern is universal.
A Biblical Framework
In Genesis, this situation happening in Johnson’s essay is made pretty clear. When Cain and Abel made their offerings to God, God accepted both but respected only Abel’s, not Cain’s. So Cain got angry (wroth). When God asked Cain why he was mad, he said this:
“{4:7} If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.”
This is the first use of the word ‘sin’ in the Bible, and it establishes a pattern: Sin is always present, always crouching at the door. The test isn’t whether temptation exists – it’s whether we reject it and “do well.”
So in other words, when we don’t “do well,” we “sin.”
The Cain story is not about ethnicity or politics. It is about the universal human capacity to rationalize wrongdoing when resentment and opportunity converge.
The situation in Minnesota – regardless of how Johnson frames it – is not doing well – taking money that is not yours, lying, cheating, stealing. And those not doing well include everyone who is supposed to keep us doing well from the top on down, and including ourselves. So the real question isn’t really about the fraud – it’s about the rise of immorality and the acceptance of fraud as “normal.”
Cain’s question was “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The modern Minnesota version is: “Are we our neighbor’s keeper?” And their answer, of course, is no: we are keepers of ourselves.” Cain’s sin was not merely violence. It was the refusal to accept responsibility. Is that what is going on in Minnesota?
When Cain killed Abel, he didn’t just commit murder – he rejected the entire concept of mutual obligation and accountability. Because the fraud is being done with other people’s money. Not earned. Not inherited. Just taken. Stolen.
Modern Minnesota (and perhaps modern America) is answering Cain’s question the same way Cain did: “No, I am not my brother’s keeper. I will take what I can get, and it’s not my job to police others or be policed myself.”
Johnson’s article suggests the problem is fixable with better leadership:
- Elect better governors
- Appoint honest attorneys general
- Demand accountability from representatives
However, better leadership won’t help unless the electorate wants it.
If you elect a reformer who tries to:
- Implement strict verification
- Investigate fraud aggressively
- Enforce rules consistently
- Ignore claims of racism when investigating crime
They risk defeat in a political environment where enforcement is less valued than access.
The “Public Has Changed”
Over time, several forces—demographic shifts, identity politics, welfare expansion, institutional scale, and cultural relativism—have altered the moral environment in which public money is distributed. None of these forces alone explains the pattern. But together, they may have weakened the civic reflex against corruption that once existed.
This volatile combination changed the character of the Minnesota public fundamentally so that:
- The old civic virtues (honesty, self-reliance, accountability) became no longer dominant
- The risk is that extraction begins to outrank contribution, and accountability becomes negotiable.
- Democratic responsiveness now means officials serve these new values
If this is true, then:
- Elections won’t fix it – unless integrity is the decisive voting issue.
- New policies won’t fix it – they’ll be undermined or ignored
- Prosecution won’t fix it – it’s too widespread and politically protected
- Federal intervention won’t fix it – local resistance will be fierce
The only solutions would be:
- Fundamental cultural/moral renewal (how?)
- External imposition of standards (federal receivership? But even Trump seems constrained)
- Collapse and rebuilding (after the money runs out)
- Exodus (productive citizens leave, accelerating decline)
When corruption ceases to disqualify, something deeper than policy has shifted. Indifference is no longer neutral; it becomes participation in the drift.
The Hardest Question
What do you do when democratic responsiveness produces corruption?
If a society’s moral reflex against corruption weakens, democracy faithfully executes that corruption. This is the nightmare scenario that the Founders feared – which is why they built in:
- Constitutional limits on majority rule
- Separation of powers
- Federalism (so corrupt states can’t drag down others)
- Rule of law (not rule of men)
But what if those fail? What if a state’s entire political culture, from voters through officials, has normalized corruption?
The Augean stables had not been cleaned in over 30 years, and over 1,000 cattle lived there. However, Heracles succeeded by rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth. Maybe that’s how we fix the situation.
The Uncomfortable Facts
Joe Friday in Dragnet used to say when interviewing people, “Just the facts please.” My philosophy teacher asked, “What do you do with a fact? Can it keep you warm?” What is a “fact?” Google tell us it is “a thing that is known or proved to be true.” So the real question is, what is the truth? And as Jack Nicholson said, “You can’t handle the truth.”
The Founders assumed a virtuous citizenry. Madison wrote that the Constitution required “sufficient virtue among men for self-government.” What if that virtue erodes?
When corruption becomes democratically popular, there may be no peaceful, legitimate, democratic way to fix it.
Every solution either:
- Violates democratic principles (external imposition)
- Requires what isn’t there (virtuous citizenry)
- Takes too long (cultural renewal)
- Punishes innocents (collapse/exit)
- Is politically impossible (partition)
This is a genuine civilizational dilemma.
The American experiment assumed:
- Virtue in the citizenry
- Shared commitment to constitutional norms
- Common culture and values
- Self-correction through democratic process
What if those assumptions are false? What if a polity can democratically choose corruption and decline?
Then there’s no good answer. Only painful choices between authoritarian intervention (federal takeover), a slow collapse, cultural separation or miraculous renewal.
So asking “What do you do when democratic responsiveness produces corruption?” may not have a satisfying answer because it reveals the limits of democracy itself.
Democracy is a means, not an end. It only works when the population has:
- Shared moral framework
- Commitment to truth
- Willingness to self-govern responsibly
- Preference for virtue over extraction
When those disappear, democracy faithfully executes the decline.
The Founders knew this. That’s why Franklin said “A republic, if you can keep it.” The “keeping it” requires virtue. Without virtue, you can’t keep it.
So what do we do?
I don’t know if there’s a good answer. The most serious political questions are actually theological/moral questions in disguise. “What do we do about fraud?” seems like a policy question.
But it’s really: “What do we do when a people loses the capacity for virtue? When democratic responsiveness serves corruption? When ‘sin lies at the door’ and entire communities choose not to master it?
Democracies do not manufacture virtue. They assume it.
When citizens no longer insist that integrity is non-negotiable, institutions adapt accordingly. The question Minnesota forces us to ask is not whether leaders failed, but whether we still possess the moral reflex that once made such failure intolerable. If that reflex has weakened, no procedural reform will be enough. The problem is not administrative. It is moral.
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SIDE BAR: Consider PPP
Look no further than the PPP to illustrate the morality shift.
The SBA disbursed approximately $1.2 trillion in COVID-19 relief funds (EIDL and PPP combined)[1]. Over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent loans were disbursed, meaning at least 17% of all COVID-19 EIDL and PPP funds went to potentially fraudulent actors. The U.S. Small Business Administration inspector general estimates $136 billion in fraud from the EIDL and $64 billion in fraud from the PPP. And, a 2021 University of Texas study estimated that about 15% of the program’s loans, representing $76 billion (about 1.8 million loans out of 11.8 million total loans), had at least one indication of fraud.
This illustrates how institutional design can normalize misconduct:
- Intentionally Weakened Controls: In the rush to swiftly disburse COVID-19 funds, SBA weakened or removed the controls necessary to prevent fraudsters from easily gaining access to these programs
- “Easy Money” Attraction: The lure of “easy money” in this pay and chase environment attracted an overwhelming number of fraudsters to the programs
- Speed Over Verification: The SBA approved 1.7 million loans in the first 13 days of the program, exhausting the initial $349 billion in funds
- Banks Had No Skin in the Game: Factors contributing to PPP fraud included a rushed rollout of funds and little financial risk for lending banks, leading to an environment conducive to fraud
And it wasn’t just “career criminals”.
- 19 U.S. Postal Service employees and former employees in central Illinois were charged with defrauding the PPP by claiming bogus expenses in fictitious businesses
- A Veterans Affairs Nursing Assistant pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a PPP loan
- SEC-registered investment advisors (supposedly sophisticated, regulated professionals)
- Small business owners who exaggerated payroll
- Organized fraud rings using synthetic identities
The synthetic identity fraud: 69,323 questionable Social Security Numbers were used to obtain $5.4 billion from the COVID-19 EIDL program and PPP. Even supposedly sophisticated professionals did this: About 25% of 2,999 SEC-registered investment advisory firms that received loans reported more employees on their PPP application than they disclosed on their Form ADV.
These are people who:
- Are regulated by the SEC
- Have fiduciary duties
- Face professional licensing consequences
- Have legitimate businesses and income
Yet when the opportunity arose and verification was minimal, many committed fraud.
Key Parallels to Minnesota Fraud:
- Rushed implementation with weak controls – Both PPP and Minnesota programs prioritized speed over verification
- “Pay and chase” model – Disburse first, investigate later
- Fear of being restrictive – Banks and agencies afraid to deny applications
- No immediate consequences – Low risk of detection
- Knowledge spread through networks – Once people saw others succeeding, techniques spread
- Wide participation – Not just “bad guys” but postal workers, nurses, business owners, investment advisors
The Lesson?
SBA calibrated its internal controls and weakened or removed the controls necessary to prevent fraudsters from easily gaining access
When you deliberately weaken institutional controls in the name of speed/access/equity, you create an environment where fraud becomes rational behavior for people who would not normally commit crimes.
The PPP fraud demonstrates that:
- Opportunity matters more than character for determining fraud rates
- Speed and access goals can overwhelm fraud prevention
- “Pay and chase” is vastly more expensive than “verify first”
- Once fraud normalizes, participation spreads rapidly
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[1] I was one of those that took PPP dollars to keep my employees employed. Working with my bank, the process was filling out forms, getting approval, getting the money. Six figures. Trust was there with what I filled out. I kept people employed. But others did not. When it came to requesting PPP again as my accountant at the time suggested – “it’s free money” he told me – I said, “Nothing is free.” I didn’t do it, and we are still standing.
