670. Why Do Bureaucrats and the Mainstream Media Fear Nick Shirley?

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today I want to talk about something that's going around the news right now.

Now, again, we do record these episodes a little bit before they air, and since I am recording this on New Year's Eve, actually, some developments might have happened by the time that this airs, but I want to talk about a 23-year-old boy named Nick Shirley, who has been all over the news right now because of some taxpayer, some fraud that he has been uncovering in Minnesota with people who've been misusing taxpayer funds. So to back up, before we dive right in, I want to talk about something that I think is probably the best part to come out of the internet, and it's funny, when I talk about the internet, I'm thinking about, you know, I can remember before the internet and I can remember when the internet came and it became this big thing, but I think today, especially our young listeners, take for granted what things were like before. And what I mean by that is when it came to the news, when it came to journalism, before the internet, you really only got your news from whatever you heard on TV, whatever you heard on the radio.

These were people who were professional journalists. They were people who worked for a major network, and those were who we were told to put our trust in. Now, over time, that trust faded, and part of the reason that trust faded is because when you had the internet, you had the rise of what we call independent media.

You had the rise of people who were just regular people who were becoming journalists themselves, and the journalists and the media obviously didn't like this, and they tried to pull the, like, well, they don't have, you know, degrees in journalism, they don't work for a major network. Why are we trusting these independent journalists? And I think what we've discovered over time is because the independent journalists have one, more of an incentive to actually get the real story, and they don't answer to anyone. Even people with the best intentions who go into journalism for a major media company, they're censored, right? They have to do, or they have to not do, they have to not report on certain things that maybe their boss doesn't want them to report on.

We saw this with COVID, with, you know, these major news networks where they were spinning their own story, and both sides do this. It's not one or the other. They're both very guilty of it.

But media has, by and large, been a liberal thing, right? So I think we come to associate it with that, but it happens on all sides. All this to say, the rise of independent journalism was really important because finally we were getting new angles, or we were hearing stories that maybe the news wasn't going to report on. And this is still carried over today.

And you see the media, the big media companies getting really nervous, right? They are losing viewership because people are preferring these independent journalists. And so Nick Shirley, this is really cool because he's so young, I think is the really fun part. He's 23 years old, young in my perspective, 23 years old.

He has a camera and, you know, the will to uncover some corruption. And he goes on a little, you know, a little investigative journey to find out what's going on in Minnesota. And I want to pause right there real quick and talk about another.

I mentioned the internet giving rise to these independent journalists. The other thing is technology, right? Back back in my day, when I was growing up, when I was the age of many of our listeners, we had video cameras, but they were huge. Like my dad would haul this like briefcase with this giant video camera to all our family events.

But it wasn't as easy to just take that with you anywhere, right? But now what do we have? We have phones in our pocket that are videos. And so it's become so much easier for independent journalists to get started because there's no barrier to entry as far as I can't afford this technology. So that's another really important thing.

And that's basically what Nick Shirley is doing. Nick Shirley is armed with, you know, curiosity with a with an iPhone and with some sources that are giving him some information. So let's dig into what exactly it was that he was investigating.

So Nick Shirley has become not as popular as he has over the last, you know, several weeks or months, I guess, by the time this airs. But he's he's built a following because he does ask hard questions, you know, like, where is taxpayer money going? What are people actually using these funds for? And, you know, nowadays we live in a time where he can find public records, where you can go and interview people. And so Minnesota has been under some scrutiny for a while, and there have been some other other things where people were concerned.

But in this particular instance, Nick was concerned on about these daycare centers that were given a lot of public funding and he was tipped off. He was given some information and then he looked at some public records that suggested that perhaps these daycares weren't actually doing what they were saying they were doing. And so that means that they were committing fraud.

Right. So they weren't they were taking our money. Remember, this isn't just taking you might think like, well, it's in Minnesota.

This isn't, you know, my way. No, this is federal funds given to them. So they are taking our tax dollars.

And if you know, Nick Shirley is correct, it's completely fraudulent. They're not using it for what they were given the money for. So what did he find? What was concerning? Well, there was one place, I believe, where the it was called like the Learning Center and learning was spelled incorrectly.

I have seen daycare centers where that's happened before. They'll say like, like curious kids. And it's like spelled with K's because they're trying to be cute.

But this one was kind of spelling learning wrong without the N seems kind of weird. So Learning Center, he goes to all these different these different daycare centers across Minnesota who had received these public funds, and he's seeing that the buildings actually kind of appear deserted. Nobody's there.

And it's at like 2 p.m. on a weekday where you'd think daycare would be in session, right? That's kind of like peak hours when parents are at work, and that's when kids are at school. So these businesses weren't seeming to like conduct business at all. They were actually seeming like maybe they were just buildings with a with a title up front.

And they also the operations, these buildings, these businesses didn't seem capable of actually having the operations that this major, you know, tax, these these tax dollars were meant to fund. So it just didn't seem plausible that all this money was being used correctly. And so he's going around again with his camera and he's trying to figure out what's going on.

So what Nick finds by using public records, by looking at, you know, some some spreadsheets he came across by looking at by interviewing people by getting some sources, what he is identified more than one hundred and ten million dollars in questionable payouts that are coming from us. So that's one hundred and ten million dollars that we have paid going to businesses that don't really seem like they're real. And what's maybe most concerning about this is it did not take Nick very long to find this out.

Right. And that brings up a very important question. If this 23 year old was able to find this out in like the span of a day, why aren't Minnesota officials? Why has no one else? Why have there been no audits? Why has no one else been able to figure this out? Is it that they're just not looking? Is it that they know and they're just they don't want to say anything? Was it an accident? We don't know.

But the biggest thing is, is this is a lot of taxpayer dollars. So why didn't anyone who was responsible for making sure that money was used correctly? Why didn't they catch this? Why weren't they overseeing where this money was going? And that I mean, to us, to Tattletoons readers and listeners, I think we understand that that's the problem with governments, right? They are bureaucratic. They are they are they are not held accountable when you have so many people you can point the finger and blame.

It's like that Spider-Man meme where they're all there's like five Spider-Mans all pointing at each other because no one no one person is really accountable. And so you can just, you know, pass the blame on to somebody else. So this bureaucracy, this is where all the problems happen, right? Because of government getting too big because Minnesota, Minnesota is just one example.

Minnesota is just where we're looking right now. But the problem isn't a Minnesota only, right? Because the structure, this this problem is national, because what happens is you get large amounts of taxpayer dollars coming from all of us. And they're funneled through.

They're given to various state agencies. And then they go through all these multiple layers, these bureaucratic, these bureaucratic layers. Right.

And so then eventually people can't even really keep track of where the money is going. And somebody is getting a really big payout. And so this there's no, again, one person responsible.

And so it's so easy for things like this to to fall between the cracks. And a bigger problem. One thing that I've I've been laughing at as I've been reading articles on this is I don't know why I clicked on a CNN article, but I did.

And you know, it opened it was you could tell that it was like trying to be neutral. It was trying to be unbiased, but it was absolutely biased. So they open up by by saying what's going on and they say allegedly.

And that's fine, because until there is a full investigation, it's it's legally safe to say, like supposedly or allegedly, but they're discounting Nick because, one, he's so young. Oh, he's he's right leaning. He has said things that are, you know, anti this and anti that.

And so they're feeding this narrative of even if this kid is right, what are his motives? Right. So they're almost setting him up where even if even if Nick is correct, he's still the villain. And it's interesting because here you have a young boy who's doing the job, the job of these CNN reporters to actually find these real stories.

And of course, they're already discounting him and setting him up to fail because that's what we do. Right. But here's the other problem with this is why why did Nick uncover it? Because nobody else was.

And that is where, you know, I mean, that's how the market works, right? You're supposed to fill in gaps. But that's where this is so absurd, because what do you hear when these things happen? What do you hear? You hear government agencies and governors and all these politicians say, well, we're going to investigate that. You know, we're going to demand answers.

You know, we're going to fix this process. We're going to fix the problem. We're going to make sure this never happens again.

And people see that on the news and they think, all right, that's good. They're going to take care of it. And they move on to the next thing in the news cycle.

But here's the thing. Rarely do politicians actually live up to what they're saying. Rarely do they actually go, you know, Tim Walz, who's the governor of Minnesota.

There have been other other instances similar to this happening under his nose. And he always says these things. I'll investigate.

I'll do this. I'll do that. And I mean, I have to be thinking that he's kind of shaking in his boots right now, because if all these all these allegations turn out to be true and they're looking like this is very credible, then there's a problem and there's a bigger problem that's going to have to be fixed.

And you have to you have to wonder, this is just what Nick has uncovered again in the span of so little time. What else is going on and why is nobody else reporting on this? There's a lot of lessons here. I mean, so many that it's kind of hard to distort yourself around them.

So let's break it down a little bit. So first of all, fraud happens. And when fraud happens, usually, especially if it is covered by layers of bureaucracy, it just it just falls between the cracks.

Nobody knows about it. But that's unfair because that's our taxpayer dollars that is being spent on funneling millions of dollars to businesses that aren't even real businesses, possibly. Right.

And these people are making money and they're living really well while the American people are struggling. So this is a huge problem. And this is, again, a problem that bureaucracy is set up to create.

And so we have to fix that first. We have to be able to hold people accountable for what they're doing so that this stuff doesn't happen again. And I think the even bigger lesson here, a bigger lesson, because this is something that interests me, maybe that's a biased opinion on my on my part, but is the the importance of independent journalists.

And we've talked about this over and over again on this show, but independent journalists are so important because they're responsible for, well, not even responsible. They're taking on the responsibility without being asked, voluntarily going in and trying to find these stories that the mainstream media just won't report on. And what's even cooler about this and young listeners, I want you to to to keep this in mind.

I know 23 years old sounds old to you right now, but I promise you it won't pretty soon. Life, life happens quickly. But 23 is so young.

And here is this young man who's, you know, becoming a great journalist because somebody else wasn't doing their job. And so he stepped up to do that. And so remember that you're not too young to do that.

Right. You can do you can do the same thing that he's doing. You have to be responsible and making sure you're getting, you know, reliable sources and that you're checking your information.

You don't want you don't want to do what the other side does and spread, you know, misinformation. But it doesn't matter what age you are. You can become a journalist at any age.

Look, look at look at Nick Shirley. So really cool lesson about the power of independent journalism, about about not mattering how old you are to uncover a huge story. And you know, maybe by the time this airs, we'll have more answers.

But we'll try to get this up quickly so that we can still stay in the dialogue and keep you updated before anything big happens. But we will leave it there as always. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast.

And until next time, I'll talk to you later.