California Bungled $316M From Feds Earmarked for the Homeless, Now May Lose It | September 6, 2021
After collecting $316 million from the federal CARES Act to house homeless people during the Covid-19 pandemic, California simply held onto the funds instead of distributing it. The state may now lose it.
That’s according to a new report from the state auditor’s office, that found the California Department of Housing and Community Development “did not take critical steps to ensure those funds promptly benefited that population,” the Associated Press reported.
The department was supposed to distribute the money to local groups to provide homeless services but it took so long to finalize contracts that those groups didn’t have access to much of the funding during the height of the pandemic, auditors found.
There’s a big problem when Congress throws so much money at the states that they cannot even spend it.
The state audit on the misuse of homeless funds found that the department didn’t give most groups access to the first round of federal funding until December 2020, seven months after it was announced by the federal government, and only recently gave them access to the second, larger round of funding.
Now, the groups might not be able to spend the money by a September 2022 federal deadline and may lose the funding. Funding that could be used to help with issues like San Francisco's homeless human waste problem.
That’s right. The state that, as of January 2020, had about 151,000 homeless peoplemay have to give back $316 million because it was too incompetent to spend it.
California has hit a new low, managing to take a terrible homeless situation and making it worse by possibly wasting $316 million.
FBI Gave $140,000 to White Supremacist Informant – Who Continued to Publish White Supremacist Materials
September 7, 2021
A confidential informant for the FBI allegedly helped take down the alleged leader of the neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Division. The informant has received more than $140,000 since 2003.
That probable confidential informant, Joshua Caleb Sutter, also happens to be a white supremacist who operates a publishing company that distributes white supremacist materials, according to court documents filed in federal court in Seattle.
Vice reported that in the government’s case against Kaleb Cole, leader of Atomwaffen Division, Cole filed a motion to suppress evidence related to the search of his home. The confidential informant wasn’t named but was described in a way that allowed investigative journalist Ali Winston to ID him. Rumors that Sutter had been paid by the FBI to be an informant, all while continuing his longstanding ties to white supremacist organizations, have circulated since 2005, according to the piece.
Sutter is a former high-ranking member of the Aryan Nations who was arrested in 2003 after he “knowingly possessed a firearm with an obliterated serial number,” Vice reported. He was in federal prison in Georgia for a short time, being released in 2004.
Sutter, along with his wife Jillian Hoy, the director of Martinet Press, publish neo-Nazi literature, Vice said.
American intelligence agencies need people on the inside to help the bring down criminals, but it should be obvious that giving a felon who’s actively engaging in hate activities $140,000 is an irresponsible use of taxpayer money.
United Nations University Spent $356,515 From U.S. Taxpayers – But We Don’t Know on What | September 8, 2021
The U.S. gave $9.7 billion to the United Nations in 2019 through 58 different accounts, including giving $356,515 to the Japan-based United Nations University.
That’s according to page 17 of OpenTheBooks.com’s new oversight report, Foreign Aid: How and Where the U.S. Spent $282.6 Billion (Fiscal Years 2013-2018).
The U.S. also paid $2.5 billion in dues to the U.N. over the last 3 ½ years.
United Nations University describes itself as “a global think tank and postgraduate teaching organization headquartered in Japan.”
Its mission “is to contribute, through collaborative research and education, to efforts to resolve the pressing global problems of human survival, development and welfare that are the concern of the United Nations, its Peoples and Member States,” according to its website.
UN University works with other universities and research institutes and offers postgraduate teaching activities, which “contributes to capacity building, particularly in developing countries.”
It’s unclear what the $356,515 to U.N. University was used for — scientific research, climate change conferences, or anything else.
Bureaucrats are spending Americans’ hard-earned money on foreign aid, with little accountability and even less transparency.
Federal Aid: An Estimated $2 Billion in Fraud From 2005 Hurricane Katrina Bailouts | September 9, 2021
Throwback Thursday!
Hurricane Ida battered Louisiana on Sunday, killing at least one person and knocking out power for more than 1 million customers.
That happened to be the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, killing more than 1,800 people during its existence. In addition, the hurricane was estimated to have caused more than $160 billion in damage.
Quickly, the fraud began.
The FBI announced in October 2008 that the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force brought federal charges against 907 people across the country for committing a “wide range of crimes including emergency-benefit fraud, identity theft, procurement fraud and public corruption.”
Less than a year after the hurricane, the New York Times called the waste and fraud “breathtaking,” estimating that “one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles” cost taxpayers up to $2 billion.
The fraud was rampant. The Times gave examples: a hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims and about 1,100 inmates across the Gulf Coast collecting more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.
The bureaucratic bungling was also bad, including officials ordering almost half a billion dollars’ worth of mobile homes that were never used, and spending about $416,000 per evacuee on renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base.
An investigation by the Washington Examiner 10 years after Katrina found that it was impossible to know just how much money had been lost to waste and fraud.
The government’s response to both Katrina and Covid-19 shows us that emergencies and disasters attract bad actors and they cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
EPA Gets Into the Website PR Business: Running Chesapeake Bay Websites Cost Taxpayers $6.5 Million
| September 10, 2021
The Environmental Protection Agency will spend $6.5 million to hire contractors to run a portfolio of web sites for the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership.
At about 200 miles long, Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the county, with its watershed running through New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
The program seeks to restore the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. It is made up of partnerships between those states and Washington D.C., as well as the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the EPA.
The EPA manages the Chesapeake Bay Program, staffed by employees from several federal and state agencies, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions.
So why does the EPA need to award a $6.5 million grant for someone “to design, develop, update and maintain” the various websites affiliated with the bay’s partnership?
It’s unclear what the problem is with the current website, which receives about 120,000 visits per month, according to SimilarWeb.
The grant recipient will design and develop websites “to be useable and accessible by a broad range of partnership audiences. The content included in those websites needs to be accurate and representative of key partnership messages.”
Nothing rankles taxpayers more than expensive government public relations campaigns – spending our tax dollars to convince taxpayers to spend even more of their money on a larger size and scope of government.
The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.