We Too Now Live In A Kleptocracy
Years ago, I was tracking the development of a major weapons system in an Asian country. Year after year, hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into this project with nothing to show for it. No prototypes were ever produced. After years of effort, the nation in question seemed no closer than it had ever been to having anything to show for the money spent.
I found it inexplicable. I wondered how long this could go on. Then, one day, it dawned on me. I was the problem.
Everyone else understood what was going on. I was the only one out of the loop. There would never be a weapons system. There would never be anything to show for all this effort. The point was not national defense. The point was to maintain a mechanism by which a very large number of individuals could steal huge sums of money and line their own pockets.
I thought I was looking at a bureaucracy. I was not. I was looking at a kleptocracy.
Which brings us to Minnesota and God knows how many other places around the country.
For many years, day care centers in Minnesota have been submitting claims to the government for reimbursement for care allegedly provided to children at their facilities. A huge number of these claims have been fraudulent. In some cases, it appears no children at all were ever at the facilities. In other cases, it appears the parents of real children were complicit. They showed up, signed documents saying they were leaving their children at the facilities, and then left without actually having the center do anything. The parents in question then received kickbacks from the daycare centers out of the government reimbursement.
The government money in question is provided to cover the cost of child care for low-income families. Some of that comes from the state. A great deal of that money is provided by the federal government via block grants. That means the money being looted in Minnesota was coming from all across the United States.
Much of the money paid by the government ultimately left the country in cash. We may be talking about as much as $9 billion.
Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler announced Dec. 23 that the agency was freezing $5.5 million in funding to Minnesota pending further review. The SBA said it had identified 13,600 PPP loans in Minnesota totaling $430 million suspected as fraudulent.
“Minnesota cannot be trusted to administer federal tax dollars,” Loeffler said. “Its socialist welfare system has enabled fraud on an industrial scale, at the expense of honest Americans.”
The coverage of all this increasingly focuses on the theme of incompetence. How is it possible the pundits ask that all of this was happening on a massive scale and nobody knew? The answer is – it is not.
As of a year ago, there were already 62 investigations into fraud at Minnesota day care centers. There have been allegations of the theft of what may ultimately prove to be billions of dollars from taxpayers for at least a decade.
The federal government has been warning of abuses in the system that provides reimbursement for child care expenses for years. In 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was already sounding the alarm about fraud in the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) system, which provides the federal money to support child care for low-income families.
Everyone knew. None of this was a surprise. None of this was unknown. A massive number of people were “in on it”. They all understood the point. None of this was about providing services of any kind. It was about providing a mechanism by which massive quantities of money could be stolen. It was about theft.
The investigation into what happened in Minnesota is really just beginning. Already, we hear that the same kind of operation was ongoing in other states around the country, including Ohio and Washington. The true scope of all this can still only be imagined.
What is clear already is that big chunks of this country are now transforming before our eyes. Our system now exists for the purpose of providing a means by which individuals and organizations can loot the public treasury and enrich themselves at your expense. We, too, now live in a kleptocracy.
I would put the majority of your Congressman/women in this category too Sam. The well intentioned end up leaving after one or two terms, the lifers pad their pockets. I say it’s about time everyone stops paying taxes and let’s see how long these federal programs last. Let’s also demand term limits!
I wonder how much of the $38 Trillion deficit was stolen? The Fraud currently being exposed is probably a drop in the bucket compared to Fraud in the DOD. When’s the last time the DOD passed an audit?