Nick Shirley, Bill Glahn, Elon Musk and the power of visual media

Just 6 months ago, more or less, what I knew about the Tim Walz-Keith Ellison-Somali fraud scandal, I knew because of Bill Glahn. The things I knew, I knew because of Bill's comprehensive research. The thing I learned about Bill is that there aren't any holes in his research. When Bill first dug into the Feeding Our Futures grift (my terminology, not Bill's), those paying attention learned who the players were (mostly Somalis and Aimee Bock), the amount of $$ initially involved and the nature of the grift. By the time that the trial verdict was announced, Minnesotans wee shocked with the audacity of the grifters.

Speaking of the trial, that's when we learned that Joseph Thompson (as he was called then) was a skilled prosecutor nobody should've messed with. Thanks to the Feeding Our Futures investigation and trial, e learned about the Medicaid fraud scandal. Included in THAT scandal was the Housing Stabilization Services, aka HSS scandal, the fraud arisng from the Autism assistance program and other grifts.

Lou Raguse snd A.J. Lagoe from KARE11 have done good jobs investigating the fraud, too. Still, the reason why Nick Shirley's reporting broke through is because a) his reporting was captured on videotape and b) it caught the attention of Elon Musk and VP J.D. Vance. Here in Minnesota, they're doing their best to protect Gov. Walz:

University of Minnesota media law professor Jane Kirtley says the video is flashy, but not meaty. There aren’t a lot of facts to back up the claims. "It’s a lot of rhetoric with relatively little substance behind it," Kirtley said.

If I'm ever in legal trouble, Prof. Kirtley won't be on my short list of attorneys to call. She's right in saying that "the video is flashy." I'll agree that the video isn't meaty. On that video is a timestamp, which will be used to autheticate when the video was taken. Right now, the Walz campaign is hinting that the video was shot on the weekend, not in the middle of a weekday afternoon. That timestamp would finish that spin ASAP. Once that's been authenticated, the video speaks for itself. It shows no children in these daycare centers. In businesses that've gotten millions of dollars from the state of Minnesota to supposedly provide daycare, that's a key element. How does a Somali day care center prove it provided services to children?

Further, the prosecution can introduce as evidence the workers asking Shirley why he wanted information to enter his son "Little Joey" into a daycare center. I'd love hearing one of those workers explain why they're trying to keep kids out of the daycare center. For that matter, I'd love hearing their explanation for the liberal white woman calling Nick Shirley and his friend David ICE agents. She hollared multiple times that people inside shouldn't open the door, that ICE was outside. That's one of the first scenes in Guy Benson's interview of Liz Collin:

This isn't just about Nick Shirley's video. It's also about the massive amounnts of investigation into these frauds (yes, that's plural; that isn't a typo). It's indisputable that VP J.D. Vance's and Elon Musk's retweets of Mr. Shirley's tweet heightened the visibility of Shirley's video. Still, the thing that's hurting Tim Walz the most is the fact that people saw with their own 2 eyes that these daycare centers were empty except for the mean-spirited workers.

Let's ask another question within the context of service industries. Why would a business owner hire such grumpy, mean-spirited workers to work in a service industry? That's like hiring Bonnie and Clyde to establish bank security.