Responsibility and accountability

I am sincerely impressed with Badeh Dualeh’s letter to the editor (“A minority of Somalis have brought shame to our community“, Jan. 1) regarding his Somali community. His depth and wisdom was an even-handed reflection about his community that highlights both his connection to his heritage and a call for its responsibility. I also loved the challenge to attackers who make this fraud such a small percentage of what the current administration has taken as noted by Frank Erickson’s comments in another letter to your paper the same day (“Accountability?”.

Curtis Pribula, Fridley

How that turned out

One of the main reasons for Japan’s expansionist policies which began WW11 in the Pacific was their perceived need for oil to continue and expand their need to have an empire. They felt the need to invade and control their neighbors in the Dutch East Indies, which had a vast supply of oil, and this in turn brought on the need for other countries to protect themselves by increasing their weaponry  and alliances which destabilized the entire area.

So how did this turn out for everyone?

Mike Greeman, Woodbury

The powerful weapon

Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King showed us that the moral arc of the universe can indeed be bent toward justice through non-violent resistance. One might assume that they had somehow managed to purge their hearts of rage. Not so. By all accounts, both experienced great rage at times, almost debilitating in its intensity. What they did master, though, was the art of molding their rage into the much more powerful weapon of peaceful resistance, or non-violence — the opposite of which is not rage at all — but indifference.

Gretchen Thompson, St. Paul

Performance pay might help

Columnist David Drucker’s assertion that a “$174,000 annual base salary (top leaders earn a bit more) is inadequate” for members of Congress may be entirely correct (“Congress could make itself relevant again. Anytime,” Jan 6). It certainly is not a salary level that provides a particularly high standard of living, especially when travel and living arrangements in two separate geographical areas are involved.

Maybe members of Congress should be offered performance pay like so many other jobs worldwide.  Performance would be based on their approval rates among their own constituency. If 100% of surveyed voters in their constituency approve of their performance, their salaries would increase by the total amount available — maybe $100,000 … or even significantly more.  (We’ll let our expert analysts/statisticians figure out how to gauge approval rating.) Performance pay based on constituency approval would help to assure that members of Congress were responding to the voters in their constituency. If Democracy is a form of government where power belongs to the people, let’s give that power back to the people. Right now there is no assurance that an elected member of Congress is actually voting in the manner that their constituency prefers. Performance pay might help.

Linda Limback, Mendota Heights

‘Free’ health care?

In significant measure, I find common ground with Abby McCloskey in her Jan. 4 column regarding data, its availability, how it is collected, the limits of definition, timing and analysis (“What’s worse than cherry-picked government data? None at all“).

Most of us agree that data, absent some informed knowledge and principled analysis, makes the transformation of data into information that may well be not reliable. Of course, depending on whose ox is being gored also complicates the understanding and credibility of information available.

One of her comments led me to question in what universe of data Ms. McCloskey resides. While she comments on the comparability of information regarding senior populations, she off-handedly comments about our “free healthcare.”

My wife and I are seniors and covered by Medicare. In 2025, our healthcare costs were: $4,500 for premiums; $4,000 in deductibles for hospital and physician services; $2,900 for drug deductibles and co-pays; $3,000 for services necessary but not covered by Medicare (vision and dental).

Out-of-pocket expenses north of $14,000 belie Ms. McCloskey’s assertion of free healthcare for seniors. It’s likely to be more costly in 2026, given national and Twin City market disruptions that will carry into and through the new year. Don’t get me started on the Medicare payroll taxes we paid prior to our retirement.

It may have been a parenthetical comment in her letter, but I wonder whose ox was being gored by including it.

Brian McInerney, Woodbury

Here we go again

Here we go again. What is wrong with this man whose job it is to bring this country together? He says whatever he pleases whether it makes sense or not or whether it’s true or not. To say that Gov. Walz was behind the assassination of Melissa Hortman and her husband is so cruel and bizarre. Trump couldn’t even speak her name, or be bothered to lower the flags across the country. We hear him saying insane things again, and people still support him. This man is mentally incompetent and literally everything that comes out of his mouth proves it.

Cathy Ferrazzo, Mahtomedi

Treachery

This week we should remember the criminal treachery of our president.

Five years ago, he incited rioters who trashed our nation’s Capitol. They came armed with the intent to impede the orderly transfer of presidential power. Over 140 police officers were injured by the mob; some are disabled to this day. Our police officers were pepper-sprayed, beaten with flagpoles and crushed in doorways.

Officer Caroline Edwards, U.S. Capitol Police, described what she witnessed after a steel bike rack had crashed down on her head: “I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood.”

Officer Daniel Hodges, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, recalled a rioter shouting at him, “You will die on your knees!”

The events of January 6th led to the nation’s largest criminal investigation in its history and nearly 1,600 convictions of rioters.

On January 20, 2025, our president pardoned all of them, including those who were convicted of felony assault of police officers.

Last month, former special prosecutor Jack Smith testified before a hostile group of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. Among his observations: “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that (the President) engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

Mr. Smith was unable to press charges against our president, leading to the most lawless, corrupt presidency in American history, supported by a Supreme Court and a feckless Congress that will seemingly grant the president unlimited power. As a result, a criminal autocracy is now running the country.

Never forget the atrocities of January 6, 2021, or the perfidy of the President on January 20th, 2025. Our children and grandchildren are not likely to forgive the enablers of those awful days.

Roald Evensen, River Falls

Given the latest events …

Given the latest events in Minneapolis, Donald Trump and his Cabinet should be designated as a terrorist organization.

Scott H. Frantzen, Woodbury

What now?

Fraud in public assistance is bad. So is official corruption, mismanagement, and neglect. That’s not controversial.

What’s worth debating is how we spend our limited oversight capacity when enormous sums move quickly through federal-state pipelines, alongside the routine annual flow of trillions of dollars in Medicare, Medicaid and other benefits.

Much has been said about inadequate oversight. Yet, how much is too much?

In Minnesota’s case, the “Feeding Our Future” scandal illustrates a basic truth about bureaucracy: Frontline detection often comes from insiders and routine controls, not from political pile-ons. A state executive branch employee, Emily Honer of Minnesota’s Department of Education, identified suspicious conduct and reported it to federal authorities, including the FBI; investigations followed; several dozens of people were prosecuted; the press covered it. Yet the loudest wave of “concern” seemed to arrive later, when the story became useful as a weapon in a broader political fight.

That timing and context matters because it exposes a recurring problem in public administration: we confuse governance with performance theater.

If we’re serious, we should ask a harder question than “How much fraud is acceptable?” We should ask: What level of enforcement is worth paying for, and what does each additional dollar actually buy? Public policy has names for this tradeoff:

Cost–benefit and marginal returns: The first dollars spent on auditing and controls usually catch a lot. The next dollars catch less. At some point, oversight becomes a very expensive way to produce very small improvements.

Principal–agent problems: Voters (“principals”) rely on agencies (“agents”) to administer programs. Agents need discretion to do the job, but discretion creates opportunities for both mistakes and abuse.

Administrative burden: More documentation, more verification, and more hoops can reduce fraud, but they also raise costs, slow delivery, and deter eligible people from getting help.

Risk-based regulation: The smartest systems don’t try to prevent every possible bad act. They concentrate scrutiny where risk is highest, audit strategically, and improve controls based on how fraud actually happens.

Try to apply these theories when imagining the money, time, and energy spent by politicians and citizens over the last several months in scrutinizing Minnesota’s books and processes, and the daycare centers and other aid recipients, as part of their admitted and acknowledged quest to take down their targeted political enemy. Imagine the cost of such an endeavor if made into a government-operated system. Taxpayers can’t pay for a state-run version of that crusade, especially when it’s sold as “fraud concern.” Minnesotans can’t afford to fund outrage campaigns under the label of accountability.

Restraint and perspective are imperative.

None of this is an argument for complacency. It’s an argument for a balance of efficiency and effectiveness: Build oversight systems that are targeted, adaptive, and proportionate, and resist turning every scandal into a partisan blood sport, with maligned minority groups used to trigger prejudice and inflame passions.

Because if we’ll spend months of outrage, billions of dollars, and endless attention to score points after the fact, but balk at funding the quieter work that prevents the next disaster, we’re not fighting fraud. We’re just exploiting it for political advantage. And that may be the most expensive inefficiency of all.

Matthew Torgerson, St. Paul