Let’s start this year off with some good old fashioned political class insanity where the wasting of taxpayer dollars and the corruption and incompetence of government programs never cease to provide a dismal picture of how inept the American political class continues to be.
1)Ro Khanna is a California Congressman. He is a Democrat just like the governor of the state, Gavin Newsom. Thus, you would think that Khanna would be a supporter of Newsom especially since Newsom sees himself as a good candidate for President.
And if you did think that, you would be wrong, given what Khanna recently said what was going to do to undercover fraud in government programs in California and the related screwup in Newsoms’ administration regarding the wasting of taxpayer wealth:
Khanna announced that he would introduce legislation to investigate what he calls fraud, wasteful spending, and abuse in California state’s government, fraud that has been estimated at $72 billion.
He wants a state government audit and Congressional hearings to investigate the alleged fraud.
He claimed that his office has been flooded with citizens' calls about the state government in California wasting money.
Of course, Newsom’s office disputed the $72 billion figure and of course, like most TDS afflicted politicians, blamed Trump.
But Trump had nothing to do with the California Employment Development Department (EDD) paying out $32.6 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims during the pandemic and during Newsom’s tenure as governor.
One example of the EDD waste was the finding of auditors that the state paid out $810 million in unemployment benefits to people that were in prison.
A more recent state audit found that the EDD wasted $4.6 million on cell phone service fees for over government 6.200 cell phones that had not been used for four or more months.
But of course, the most inept handling of taxpayer wealth has been the failure of the state to build its highly touted high speed rail line.
The project was approved by voters in 2008 and it was supposed to be finished by 2020 at a cost of $33 billion.
Basically nothing has been built since approval and the project is not supposed to be completed by 2033, 13 years late, and the current budget estimate could be anywhere between $89 billion and $128 billion.
Thus, the project is going to be at least $56 billion over budget and possibly as much as $95 billion over budget.
A Democrat going after another Democrat for wasting taxpayer wealth, something you do not see everyday. But obviously government corruption and wasting of taxpayer money is not confined to Minnesota.
2)If the Congressman is right and the California state government is losing billions and billions of dollars to fraud and incompetence, then what is happening, or not happening in Los Angeles, reinforces that image of state politicians being clueless and inept:
The devastating Los Angeles wildfires were over a year ago.
The fires destroyed 16,000 structures and killed 31 people.
One would have hoped that the local, county, and state government agencies would have been all over this disaster and helping for a quick rebuild and return to normalcy.
However, over a year later, only about 500 homes are under construction.
That means that over a year later the government entities of the state have gotten only about 3% of the structures destroyed moving towards a rebuild.
At this rate it will take well over 30 years to complete the rebuild.
But the LA mayor, Karen Bass bragged that this dismal performance was the fastest in state history.
She also compared her pathetic rebuild rate to Hawaii/Maui’s rebuild rate: “If you look at Hawaii, Hawaii right now, those fires were two years ago. And they have about 300 homes that are being rebuilt. We have more than 300 homes being rebuilt in the Palisades right now.”
Of course, it is not her fault since she claimed that others have "deliberately put out misinformation” about the rebuild rate.
Newsom, of course, blamed Trump for the slow pace of the rebuild, a whining excuse if there ever was one.
There is an old saying, “you are queen of the pigs.” The implication is that you are the best but you are the best of the worst. Which is what Bass is saying: this pathetic rebuild process is the best ever in California history which at a 3% rate after a year means that Caiofrrnia’s past rebuilds must have been brutally slow. And to compare the LA rebuild to Hawaii is also ridiculous since no one is saying that the Hawaii rebuild is going great and getting building supplies to Hawaii, lying half an ocean away, is much harder than getting building supplies to LA.
3)As we have discussed quite extensively recently, independent journalist Nick Shirey, cleanly and in depth uncovered massive taxpayer fraud as it is related to Somali charities and day care centers in Minnesota. The fraud now is estimated to be $9 billion and has led to the inept governor, Tim Walz, abandoning his campaign for reelection as governor.
Federal authorities are now flooding into Minnesota to clean up the mess and fraud that Walz allowed to go on for years despite hundreds of whistle blowers in the state government sounding the fraud alarm. And now out in Washington state, other independent journalists are uncovering potentially and allegedly similar Somali day care frauds going on in that state:
Cam Higby and Jonathan Choe are two Washington state independent journalists,
They have been researching state government records and found discrepancies relative to state day care centers.
Choe then went and visited an address location listed in state records as Dhagash Family Childcare.
When he got there, there was no child or day care center in operation even though state records showed that the address had received $210,000 in taxpayer money in 2025.
In addition, a local resident told him that no child care center operated there.
Another area journalist, Carleen Johnson, investigated another Somalia day care center and found no children present and was threatened of police involvement if she did not go away.
These and other journalists have pointed out that the state of Washington recognizes an amazing 539 day care centers that have Somali as the primary language and yet many of them have no addresses listed with the state.
Amazing: state recognized Somali day care centers that number in the hundreds, day care centers with no kids, day care centers that do not have an address listed with the state.. One can only imagine the taxpayer fraud going on within the whopping 539 centers. Thank goodness these brave journalists have given the Washington politicians a road map to track and get rid of bogus operations ripping off the taxpayer.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than thanking the journalists for possibly identifying government fraud, the mayor of Seattle, Katie Wilson, publicly denounced these independent journalists for their investigations, actually labeling them "extremist influencers.”
So uncovering government fraud and waste is now extremism. She also accused the journalists of “targeted harassment." Specifically: "Our city will not tolerate anyone who is trying to intimidate, harass, or film Somali childcare providers. Such behavior is unacceptable and puts children and families at risk."
So pathetic, there has been no reports of any of these folks intimidating, harassing, or filming childcare centers, they are doing what good journalists do: researching, investigating, and reporting, nothing more. So disgusting that a politician would reject help in ferreting out criminal defrauding of taxpayers in favor of those possibly doing the defrauding.
Enough insanity for today: more fraud in California, more incompetence in Los Angeles, and more fraud possibly in Washington, and in every case, politicians care more about optics than protecting their citizens’ property and wealth.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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