The entire rotten structure of the Left’s modern governing model is being exposed.
Several stories in the last few weeks have uncovered how much of the American political system, in Democrat-dominated cities and states in particular, has been twisted to serve the interests of the Left and its wards rather than the American people.
The widespread Somali fraud occurring in Minnesota has proven to be, as many suspected, just the tip of the iceberg.
Last week, CBS News reported that Los Angeles has become “ground zero” for hospice fraud. It analyzed the “records for every hospice operating” in LA and found evidence suggesting widespread fraud is taking place.
CBS noted that the California state auditor sounded the alarm three years ago that “Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010—more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.”
The report included “notable red flags,” including many hospices being located in the same building, low patient counts, excessive billing, and many patients being discharged despite it being end-of-life care.
California authorities said that they terminated the licenses of 280 hospices, but CBS reported that the problem continues to be out of control.
“The CBS News analysis reveals that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County, trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state,” the news outlet reported.
I’m pleasantly surprised that CBS even decided to do this. Usually, this kind of investigative work requires the resources and gumption of a random YouTuber with a camera and some time on his hands.
As usual, CBS couldn’t help but say that Republicans have “seized” on this issue to hurt Gov. Gavin Newsom. It noted that hospice fraud is a nationwide problem, and it is.
But the issue, along with various other astounding pillagings of the public purse, has been particularly acute in places inclined to give copious amounts of money to open-ended social projects with no questions asked. That’s basically anywhere Democrats have a majority, and the Left is free to do as it pleases.
The New York Post reported Monday that New York City “spent roughly $81K per person on homeless services last year.” The Post noted that this sum is equivalent to the city’s “median household income as of the 2024 US Census—$81,228 annually.”
That number has surged in the last half decade.
“Spending on the city’s Department of Homeless Services’ Street Homeless Solutions division more than tripled over the last six years, from $102 million in 2019—or about $28,000 per ‘unsheltered homeless person,’ according to the report from the state comptroller’s office,” the Post reported.
Despite this remarkable amount of homelessness spending, homelessness is not on the decline. Far from it. The city’s homeless population “increased by 26%” since 2019, according to a report by New York City Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
Notably, all that money isn’t just straight up going to the homeless. Instead, it’s going to a constellation of organizations that are supposedly in the business of “helping” them.
One liberal on X, Noah Smith, lamented that nonprofits are “sucking the life out of the progressive project.” But I disagree. They are the progressive project. Or at least, they are a key pillar in cementing the Left’s power not just nationally, but globally.
If one considers the Democrat “blue state model” with the best steel man argument, you might think of high-tax, high-spending governments that, in theory, fund more generous social services. Hey, you might be getting hosed on Tax Day, but at least the roads are paved, the poor are taken care of, and the homeless are being housed, right?
Wrong.
It’s becoming clearer, as one “Quality Learning Center” after another is being uncovered, that the Left’s governing model is now far removed from the dreams of technocratic Progressives at the beginning of the 20th century.
Instead, what we have is a mass spoils system, justified by adherence to ideology, and grafted onto a vast managerial class that’s enriching itself at the public trough.
They’ve fused government bureaucracies with nonprofits and various client classes to create a self-reinforcing system. All these groups in some way benefit from things remaining as they are, in making sure that the people getting bilked are either blind to the problem or are too powerless to do anything about it.
Why do you think Newsom and Gov. Tim Walz in Minnesota and other various powerful Democrats have waved away these scandals as no big deal, nothing to be too concerned about?
They aren’t in the business of good government. They are in the business of maintaining power, of ensuring that their friends and allies get theirs and that their “enemies,” the mean basket of deplorables who might complain, get nothing.
The Trump administration has done a great deal of work blowing up the Left’s patronage schemes on the national level. President Donald Trump has done more than any other president in my lifetime to ensure that the federally funded ideological projects and outright scams get the axe.
But more must be done. The deportations must continue. The fraud must be uncovered. The betrayal of the American taxpayer must be exposed. The Left’s power must be broken, or we face a national “doom loop” that we can’t escape, as we are ruled by fanatics who use their power to foist every absurd example of wokery on the American people that they can get away with.
