THE CLOWN CAN'T/WILL NOT PROTECT HOMELAND SECURITY WHY SHOULD WE EXPECT HIM NOT TO SQUANDER $300 BILLION?
Foreign Criminals Got Up to $300 Billion From America’s COVID Relief Program
By Hans Bader | June 11, 2021 | 11:43am EDT
Foreign criminals appear to have received around $300 billion from America's pandemic unemployment funds. Such handouts were paid for with government borrowing that has increased America's national debt to a point where it is now much bigger than our economy.
The New York Post reports that half of America's pandemic unemployment money may have been stolen, with foreign scammers collecting most of the stolen money:
Fraudsters may have plundered as much as half of the unemployment benefits that the U.S. pumped out in a hurry during the pandemic.
Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me, a fraud prevention service, told Axios that the US has lost more than $400 billion to crooked claims.
The U.S. may have been robbed of as much as half of all money given out through unemployment benefits during the pandemic, Hall told the outlet.
Haywood Talcove, the CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, estimated that most of the stolen money, at least 70 percent, probably ended up outside the U.S., according to Axios.
Much of the pilfered funds likely went to criminal syndicates in China, Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere, he said, according to the outlet. “These groups are definitely backed by the state,” Talcove told Axios.
A lot of the money was also likely stolen by U.S. street gangs, who have been taking a greater share of the stolen funds in recent months.
U.S.-based criminals also profited enormously from COVID relief legislation. In California alone, officials say they may have paid as much as $31 billion worth of unemployment funds to criminals, in massive insurance scams. The true amount of fraud may be far higher.
In a conference call, Julie Su, secretary for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency said, "Of the 114 billion dollars in unemployment paid by California since March, approximately 10% has been confirmed as fraudulent. An additional 17% of the paid claims have been identified as potentially fraudulent."
"There is no sugar coating the reality, California did not have sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud," Su said.
Amazingly, President Biden has nominated Su to be Deputy Secretary of Labor. As Tom Manzo noted in The Hill,
Countless Californians, ranging from business owners to those struggling on unemployment, have suffered because of Su’s incompetence. While Su was at the helm...the “most significant fraud on taxpayer funds in California history” took place at the Employment Development Department (EDD). Here’s how it went down. Prior to the pandemic, the EDD failed to update its outdated system, even though California had set aside $30 million for a modernization effort more than four years earlier. Under Su’s leadership, this crucial update never made it out of the “planning stages.”
When the pandemic hit, millions of Californians tried to apply for desperately needed unemployment insurance benefits. In response, the EDD’s system crumbled, and Californians seeking help were abandoned. Fewer than one percent of calls were answered by the agency helpline. As many as 1.8 million Californians suffered without their payments. The outrage was so great that state leaders demanded an auditor look into the problems plaguing the EDD. While investigating the website debacle, the audit also uncovered massive fraud that was taking place during the same time period.
Not all criminals get COVID relief payments due to fraud or scams. Some legally qualify for payments, because the coronavirus relief legislation was deliberately written to include prisoners in the U.S.
Prison inmates got $1,400 stimulus payments under the COVID relief law that President Biden signed in March. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) objected to that, saying prisoners have “their living and medical expenses paid for by the taxpayer,” “don’t pay taxes,” and “can’t be unemployed. Inmates are not economically impacted by COVID.” Senator Tom Cotton noted that “Dylann Roof murdered nine people,” yet “he’ll be getting a $1,400 stimulus check as part of the Democrats’ ‘COVID relief’ bill.”
Economists had expected that the U.S. economy would add over a million jobs in April 2021, because it had been growing rapidly since fall 2020 after bouncing back from the recession caused by the coronavirus. But Biden's "coronavirus relief" law, the "American Rescue Plan," prevented that by reducing job growth.
After Congress passed Biden's $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” in early March, employment grew by far less than expected in April, resulting in a shortfall of 700,000 jobs. Biden's plan reduces economic growth by encouraging people to work less and earn less money. It takes away some people’s tax credits if they work harder and earn a little bit more money. It gives some people more money in unemployment benefits than they would get by working. And it guts welfare reform, giving some people welfare even when they could work.
In the long run, Biden's plan will reduce the size of the economy and wipe out jobs by massively increasing the national debt.
“The existence of the debt saps the rest of the economy,” says Efraim Berkovich of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. “When the government is running budget deficits, the money that could have gone to productive investment is redirected…you’re taking away from the capital that we need to grow our economy in the future.”
Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. He also once worked in the Education Department.
Nolte: Failed Bidenomics Threatens to Return Us to Jimmy Carter’s 1970s
Writing in the New York Post, Charles Gasparino warns, “The Biden administration keeps insisting inflation is ‘transient,’ but there are now real signs that inflation is here and possibly for the long haul.”
“Thursday’s consumer price index increase of 5 percent year-on-year — its highest level in 13 years — is the latest and most visible piece of evidence that this scourge is making a comeback,” he adds.
The most important point he makes is this: “Inflation is a regressive tax that hits hardest at working-class and poor Americans.”
Inflation brutalizes the working class and poor, as do spiking energy prices, which are included in inflation measures, but also cause much of it. It’s not only the cost of electricity and topping your gas tank; it’s the cost of manufacturing and, most especially, transporting all the goods and services we purchase.
So it’s vital to focus on energy costs, not only for the reasons above, but also because His Fraudulency Joe Biden is waging war on oil, specifically America’s status as an energy-independent exporter.
The reasons for this crippling inflation are not difficult to discern. Because the federal government is paying millions of Americans not to work (even though the country’s reopening), an artificial labor shortage is artificially inflating wages, which increases the cost of everything else. On top of that, the federal government is pouring trillions and trillions of dollars into the economy, which is now totally unnecessary, as Gasparino points out. With the country finally reopening, the economy will grow just fine on its own without all this cheap money, which creates inflation.
Now, at this point, you might be thinking, Yeah, but wages are increasing. How is that a bad thing?
Well, what good are higher wages if inflation eats it all up. Earnings are actually down in this country and have been for five months.
What’s so fascinating about all of this is that as Biden barrels America’s economic train towards its inevitable wreck, none of the above is debatable. It not like we have experts who will argue massive government spending, artificially high wages, and zero percent interest rates won’t produce inflation. Of course, they will. And yet, out of one side of his racist mouth, Biden insists this inflation we’ve not seen since the 2008 crash (which was also caused by the government meddling in the economy by way of Fannie and Freddie) is “transient,” while out of the other side of his racist mouth, he continues to call for a trillion — with a “T” — government spending plans.
Inflation is sure not going to be “transient” if you keep the tidal waves of cheap money rolling in.
Inflation might actually be “transient” if the administration ceases the policies causing it, but it won’t. Even with our massive labor shortage, the boosted federal unemployment benefits will march on into September. This makes zero sense.
As someone who grew up in the 1970s, who turned 14 a few months after the decade ended, there were many fabulous things about that decade. Americans had finally had enough of the pompous, self-important 1960s and had themselves a blast. Of course, the civil rights movement (which I, of course, excluded from the category of “pompous, self-important”) brought a country closer together that was, at long last, ready just to have a good time. Goodbye Joan Baez, hello Led Zeppelin. Goodbye protest songs, hello rock n’ roll, and disco. Goodbye Woodstock, hello Studio 54.
It was one of the freest decades in American history, maybe the freest. I’d gladly pay six bucks for a gallon of gas and four bucks for a loaf of bread if it brought back All in the Family, Blazing Saddles, Saturday Night Fever, Blondie, Warhol, a proudly sexist James Bond, R-rated T&A, John Belushi, roller derby, George Carlin, and the great American ability to collectively laugh at ourselves and, most especially, our sacred cows. But that’s me… The cost of inflation on struggling Americans, those who live on the margins, is brutal and oftentimes crippling. It’s just not worth it, and it doesn’t have to happen — unless His Fraudulency wants it to.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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