yikes...I mentioned the bit about the UMass student on Facebook to Dan Kennedy (Bos Phoenix, Beat the Press segment of Greater Boston) and he said he found it hard to believe to be true. Yeah right. I have said Brown should change to a Dem and change his last name to Kennedy to get elected in this low info voter state.
Time to plug welfare ‘leakage’
by Howie Carr,
Sunday, February 3, 2013
“Leakage” — that’s what Gov. Deval Patrick is now calling rampant welfare fraud in his administration.
According to the inspector general, $25 million has been wasted, and we all know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Still, though — $25 million seems more like a flood than a leak.
But don’t worry, the governor assures us that the fraud rate is only about “average.” That’s certainly a relief. We’d all hate to think that the commonwealth is “below average” in the amount of fraud and abuse by the non-working classes.
But this is a governor who dismisses any and all cases of welfare fraud as mere “anecdotes.” And by the way, it appears we have a lot more “anecdotes” than were first reported — closer to 50,000, rather than the original 19,000.
None of this welfare dirty laundry would have come out if only Granny Warren’s daughter hadn’t forced the state to order a voter-registration drive last summer among the layabout class. A half-million letters went out (complete with prepaid return envelopes) and almost 50,000 came back — “return to sender, address unknown. No such number, no such zone.”
Here are a few anecdotes from the inspector general’s report involving leakage:
• A gimme girl was receiving Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children while in jail, while simultaneously “submitting time sheets stating she was participating in a work program at a career center.”
• In 2010, a gimme girl stated she did not know the whereabouts of the father of her child. Eighteen months later, she gave birth to a second child “and named the same father on the birth certificate.”
• Another deadbeat claimed she’d been unemployed for more than six years and that her husband was incarcerated. The inspector general discovered a bank account into which she had recently deposited $7,000, while withdrawing $8,500. There was of course “no evidence” of investigation by the Department of Transitional Assistance.
The inspector general discovered some problems with “the relationship status between grantees and dependent children.” Does this mean that children are being claimed by multiple women as their own in order to qualify for yet more handouts? Why not? Apparently nobody ever checks.
Don’t worry though. Deval is on the case. The hacks are setting up an “Integrated Eligibility System … with anticipated implementation by 2015.”
Only two more years of leakage among the anecdotes. That’s a load off the taxpayers’ minds.
All in all, it’s a tough report. Even Deval had to do something. So he regretfully fired his DTA commissioner, Dan Curley.
“A good guy,” Deval said.
Too bad Curley’s not a lawyer. Deval could make him a judge, just like he’s doing with Mary Beth Heffernan after her bang-up job as public safety secretary.
Are there any clerk magistrates’ jobs open? Give Curley the job, and I guarantee you in three months his nickname at the courthouse will be “Personal Recognizance.”
Or maybe “Leakage.”