Fraud beat: How Gov’t Begs To Be Scammed

Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future’s fraud “was not sophisticated,” gripes Jay Rogers at the Washington Examiner. It used “a stolen identity” to form “an LLC through a state process that verifies almost nothing,” and then enrolled “in a government program” and billed “for services that were inflated or invented.” This required no “mastermind,” just “a government willing to pay first and ask questions never.” “Programs that pay first and verify later” will attract scammers; for a true fix, require “real identity and entity verification before the check goes out,” “independent, third-party auditing,” and “real consequences for officials who ignore audit findings.” Taxpayers can’t undo this fraud but “can demand their government stop manufacturing more of it.”

Psych watch: Pushing Quack ‘Gender Medicine’

While not “a formal legal monopoly on psychology education,” the American Psychological Association “exerts near monopolistic influence on professional training across clinical, counseling, and school psychology,” notes Joseph Figliolia at City Journal. And so “the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity should take a long look” at the APA, from it “detailed position statements on gender medicine” to its flagship journal’s recent “special issue on ‘anti-trans’ legislation.” Note the APA’s “dismissal of good-faith criticism of the weak evidence for youth gender medicine as simply ‘misinformation,’ and all opposition to medically transitioning minors as ‘discrimination.’ ” These “political commitments” likely “trickle down into APA accredited programs,” undermine the “field’s professional ethical norms” and fail “to advance the interests of their patients.”

Teachers: Phony Demand for Library ‘Expertise’

When they “voiced concerns” over age-inappropriate school-library books, Crystal Marull & Vicki Baggett recount at The Hill, they “were vilified” — even after one of them earned a “library media specialist certification” and challenged one book on “linguistic terms.” Despite the books’ abundant sexual content, both women suffered “tremendous” backlash, though “we held every credential anyone could demand.” The librarians’ mantra — “trust the experts” on school books — proved a “farce”; the profession’s leaders commit to “a specific conclusion” and pretend all disagreement is “anti-intellectualism.” The even “uglier” message: “Defer to the American Library Association, or risk consequences.” If the ALA can “do that to us, what hope is there” for parents “with no credentials at all?”

From the left: Don’s Not the Big Speech Threat

“Donald Trump is clearly on the wrong side of the First Amendment” in yanking White House press credentials for “CNN, Politico, and the artist formerly known as MSNBC,” snarks RacketNews’ Matt Taibbi. Yet “it’s irritating to see news outlets held up as speech victims when they not only got facts wrong, but openly brayed for censorship” of Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot. Worse, “coverage of Trump’s nitwittery has blotted out a massive, long-developing story” about “a huge, interconnected, fast-growing” speech-control alliance of “commercial fact-checking organizations, powerful think-tanks like the Atlantic Council, agencies like the FBI and DHS, academic organizations like . . . Harvard’s Belfer Center, private companies like NewsGuard” and more. One “aging, flatulent president” isn’t “the problem, when there’s a much bigger threat still in development.”

Libertarian: Uncle Sam’s Health-Care Money Pit

“Getting government involved” will “guarantee you spend gobs of money without improving the situation,” quips Reason’s JD Tuccille. Witness “health care,” where “government has increasingly intruded for years even as dissatisfaction becomes the norm and costs go through the roof.” A new Tax Foundation report “finds that health care now consumes almost one of every three dollars the federal government spends,” thanks largely to Medicaid and Medicare expansions. It’s not clear” Medicaid even “does much good,” while Medicare is “projected to become insolvent in less than a decade.” A better plan, per the Tax Foundation authors? Market reforms, “more competition, innovation, and consumer choice.” Strip out the socialism, urge the researchers, and put the market to work.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board