Free money for investment accounts for babies and children. Quebec’s new secularism law. And the Minnesota Somalis’ billion-dollar fraud schemes.
Free Money for Investment Accounts for Babies and Children
Babies born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028 will receive $1,000 from the U.S. government, to be put into an investment account that they can draw on when they turn 18. These “Trump Accounts” were one of the features of the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Congress last summer.
Not only that, children born before that date may be eligible to receive $250 to start a similar account of their own. This is being funded by Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, and his wife Susan Dell, who are donating $6.25 billion of their own money.
That $1,000 at a standard rate of return would likely grow to $4,000 by the child’s 18th birthday. But more money could be added to those accounts. If parents, grandparents, or employers contributed an additional $5 per day ($1,650 per year), that investment could turn into $75,000. If families could contribute the maximum allowed amount of $5,000 per year, the payout would be $190,000! (See this.)
That money could be used to pay for higher education, to put money down on a house, to start a small business, or whatever else could help launch the 18-year-old into adulthood.
Michael Dell says that he started the business that turned him into one of the world’s richest men with a $1,000 investment, selling computers out of his dorm room. In his article for the Free Press entitled Why I’m Giving $6 Billion to America’s Kids, he says that he wants to give the upcoming generation a similar opportunity. “Everyone starts with something,” he says. “Everyone has a stake.”
He also thinks making children investors will be educational:
These accounts will give children the chance to become shareholders in America’s largest companies and experience what it means to earn a return. They’ll learn about dividends, reinvestment, and long-term thinking—not by studying financial theory, but by seeing their money steadily increase. That kind of exposure can change how children think about money.
The Dell money will go to children 10 years old or younger who live in ZIP codes with a median income of less than $150,000. That amounts to 75% of the country. All children within those ZIP codes will be eligible regardless of their family’s income. The Trump accounts have no income restrictions.
Families can register for both programs here, which will enable them to receive notifications about when IRS Form 4547 will be available (the paperwork needed to set up the account and receive the money) and instructions about the investment fund (which will be established at banks and other financial institutions).
Quebec’s New Secularism Law
The government of the Canadian province of Quebec has a “minister,” the equivalent of a cabinet official, in charge of stamping out religion in the public square. (His official title is the “Minister Responsible for Secularism.”)
Having already banned public sector employees from wearing religious symbols and religious clothing, Quebec has passed a new law that bans prayer in public spaces and deny accreditation for religious schools.
As reported by Wesley J. Smith in his article Canada’s Radical Secularism Becomes Increasingly Authoritarian, the law prohibits prayer or religious gatherings along roads or public parks.
Religious schools and childcare centers may no longer be accredited or subsidized. Smith quotes the law:
No accreditation may be granted to an institution whose provision of educational services prescribed in the basic school regulation during the hours of activities devoted to those services, or whose provision of childcare services, is based on religious standards or precepts, on the transmission of religious convictions or beliefs, or on religious practice, or to an institution that practices segregation, in particular on the basis of religious criteria, in the selection of students or of personnel members.
Religious symbols may not be used in public sector communications.
The Guardian adds that prayer or religious gatherings will not be permitted in colleges or universities.
Also, the prohibition on the wearing of religious symbols, such as cross necklaces, and religious clothing, such as the face coverings Muslim women wear, has been extended to include both workers and students in daycares, colleges, universities, and even private schools.
Nor will public institutions, such as college cafeterias, be able to accommodate Jews and Muslims by offering kosher or halal meals.
The main target of these secularism laws appears to be not Christians but Muslims. According to the Guardian, “The ban on public prayer comes after the group Montreal4Palestine organized Sunday protests outside the city’s Notre-Dame Basilica that included prayers.” The ban on religious clothing and face coverings applies mainly to Muslim women, with their burqas and veils.
Smith observes that the Canadian Charter guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion,” but Quebec’s anti-Muslim sentiment is being allowed to trump that. But the new law also, of course, applies to Christians, who are joining Muslims in opposing the new law.
Christians need to keep in mind that infringements of other religions’ liberty also infringes their own.
The Minnesota Somalis’ Billion-Dollar Fraud Schemes
Minnesota has been a generous host to Somali immigrants fleeing that country’s civil war in the 1990s. Today the state is home to some 80,000 Somalis, 78% of whom live in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. But some of them have returned the favor by scamming Minnesota and U.S. taxpayers out of more than a billion dollars.
The New York Times, no less, has exposed this scandal, in a series of stories by David A. Fahrenthold and Ernesto Londoño. See How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch.
The Wall Street Journal summarizes what happened:
In one alleged scheme, the outfit Feeding Our Future recruited individuals to set up a network of sham companies and sites that claimed to feed children in the pandemic. The scammers then submitted false invoices and fake attendance rosters to the state.
Some state officials, though, spotted the fraud. Whereupon Feeding Our Future, a Somali operation, cried “racism”! Whereupon the Minnesota state government dropped the investigation and kept the money flowing.
In another scheme, a 28-year-old woman allegedly launched a company, Smart Therapy, that claimed to provide one-on-one behavioral therapy to autistic children. She employed relatives with no formal education and recruited parents to enroll their non-autistic kids in her therapy sessions by paying them kickbacks of up to $1,500 a month per child. . . .Smart Therapy allegedly billed Medicaid for the kids’ supposed therapy as well as their transportation to the appointments. It also submitted false claims for meals to the state’s food programs.
The mastermind of this con was white, but the parents she paid $1500 to claim their children were autistic were Somali.
In another indictment, eight individuals this fall were charged with fraudulently billing Medicaid to help recovering addicts find stable housing. . . . Rather than help shelter recovering addicts, the defendants allegedly laundered millions of Medicaid dollars to enrich themselves. Costs for Minnesota’s Medicaid housing program, initially estimated at $2.6 million a year, ballooned to $104 million last year as it became a fund for grifters.
I don’t want to indict a whole ethnic group. So far, 86 individuals have been criminally charged for these frauds, which is around one in a thousand. More to blame are the state and federal programs that poured out taxpayer money with no safeguards, oversight, or prosecution when the scams were first identified. “It’s true that Minnesota’s generous welfare state has become a magnet for Somali immigrants,” says the editors of the Wall Street Journal. “But the main problem here isn’t ethnicity or migration. It’s the incentives for indolence and fraud at the heart of the welfare state. All that free money with few guardrails is an invitation to theft.”
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