Op-Ed: Biden's Labor Department choice boomerangs against Newsom

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus lockdowns made California one of three states with the nation’s highest jumps in joblessness. Those pandemic policies are now the subject of a fierce national debate with the Golden State’s per capita rate of COVID cases similar to Florida’s, which imposed much lighter restrictions and began aggressively reopening last fall.

While jobless claims skyrocketed across the country last year, the California agency charged with doling out unemployment insurance botched its job of getting federal checks into the hands of eligible workers. State officials estimate that nearly a quarter of the $122 billion in federal payments was squandered, fraudulently sent to scammers, while more than a million deserving recipients have been left hanging for months without relief.

With the yearly IRS tax filing deadline looming next month, there’s an alarming new element to the scandal: Many Californians who had their identifies stolen in these payment schemes are now facing federal tax bills for money they never received in part because the state failed to follow recommendations to stop using Social Security numbers in correspondence and because the EDD skipped withholding taxes in the interest of getting the money out more quickly.

Yuh gotta read this article

Freaking amazing the crap that has gone on.

If new estimates prove to be true that some $31 billion in federal taxpayer funds were lost to fraud, it will be the biggest financial scandal in state history, and at least some of the most egregious aspects of it could have been easily avoided. Unlike at least 35 other states, California lacks the technology to cross-check its state prisoner rolls against unemployment claims.

No one could have planned for the avalanche of unemployment insurance claims during the pandemic. But the fraud in California, which has accounted for 18.4% of the federal jobless benefit claims despite making up only 11.8% of the nation’s labor force, took place at a much larger scale than anywhere else.

The state agency also has struggled to hold on to its own work force. It has hired about 4,900 new employees since the pandemic hit but has lost 1,600 in the same time period over frustration with the overwhelming case load and the slow, bungled response.

(That's great. you have toll takers working from home, presumably, and while many companies are going out of business or losing employees because you demand people go home to work you freakin hire 4,900 more people???!!!)

On a local level, Democrats in swing California districts are already trying to hold Newsom and his administration accountable for the unemployment failure. Petrie-Norris won reelection for her Orange County seat by less than 2,500 votes and will face the same challenger again in 2022.

“I think you’re going to start seeing people who won by slim margins trying to distance themselves even more from this sinking ship,” Dunsmore said of the Newsom administration.

This article demonstrates what an abject failure this moron is.

Buh, Bye yuh Tard

I have come to the realization that all this chaos under Democrat administration is by design.

If things are run competently with proper oversight, very little graft and corruption can occur. But if you set it up so that millions can go missing without any way of tracking it, it is much easier to skim off the top.

It becomes a case of too big to prosecute.

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