OPINION:
It began with the state auditor being unable to track where California spends billions of taxpayer dollars on the homeless.
It has now reached the point where Democratic state legislators are making criminals out of freelance journalists who investigate fraud, such as hospices that rake in public funds but have no patients, just very expensive cars in the parking lot.
In between, Los Angeles, which is becoming more like a giant trash dump under chronic Democratic rule, is moving to end the requirement for an elected independent auditor.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is running for the White House, bristled at Medicare overseer Dr. Mehmet Oz daring to visit his state and producing investigative videos.
Collectively, the anecdotes show how Democrats are trying to hide something big: The one-party state has wasted billions of dollars on various welfare programs run by scammers.
Once upon a time, Democrats cared about waste, fraud and abuse. Not anymore.
Somewhere in liberal strategy rooms, operatives figured out that if you just pour cash into the party’s voter base, it responds by organizing and voting for your candidates.
President Biden’s open borders of 2021 to 2025 showcased the strategy: Get illegal immigrants into the country by the millions and pamper them with welfare benefits immediately. Presto, the voter base expands.
Let’s look at what the California state auditor found.
In April 2024, the office reported that more than $24 billion in funding to homeless advocacy groups over five years was not tracked. Under Mr. Newsom, as the “unhoused” population grew to 181,000 in the past 12 years, the state has not assessed whether 15 separate programs have had any effect.
Mr. Newsom pledged to heed the audit and take action.
Yet 14 months later, in December, the auditor revisited. The office concluded that Mr. Newsom had done virtually nothing to correct the system, which I assume is left-wing nonprofits ripping us off.
While Mr. Newsom ignored the auditor, Los Angeles took another tack. A charter commission has moved to abolish most accounts scrutinized by the city’s independent auditor (controller) and give the chores to a new office directly overseen by partisan Mayor Karen Bass.
The New York Post investigator found that since 2020, the city had spent $2.6 billion buying hotels, motels and dorms for the homeless. Some rooms cost $1.5 million.
Yet the current independent controller has conducted just 11 audits, compared with 108 by his predecessor, according to the Post.
Someone is speaking out. His name is Dr. Mehmet Oz, and he is the former TV doctor whom President Trump picked to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. He dove into California — not its beaches, but its fraud — and made videos accusing Mr. Newsom of negligence.
In January, the governor’s public relations team posted this insult: “Amazing to watch Dr. Oz cosplay as a fraud fighter for an effort the STATE launched years ago — back when he was busy pitching ‘miracle’ pills.”
Unbowed, Dr. Oz told Fox News that $146 billion in funds had been stolen amid “Gavin Newsom’s empire of fraud.”
He said this about eight suspects arrested April 2 by the Trump Justice Department for billing taxpayers for fake hospices. The accused was interviewed by authorities four years ago, but nothing had come of it.
“Why wasn’t this already addressed?” Dr. Oz asked. “Why was no one watching the till?”
CBS News identified nearly 500 hospices within a 3-mile radius of Los Angeles County. Dr. Oz said one-third of all U.S. hospices are crammed into that single county.
While Mr. Newsom attacks Dr. Oz, Sacramento Democrats are targeting other troublemakers: freelance journalists, the most prominent of whom is YouTube investigator Nick Shirley (1.8 million subscribers).
Mr. Shirley’s specialty is video clips of him investigating a site, such as a hospice, day care center or medical clinic, and showing that the office or facility is empty. He then confronts the proprietors who steal taxpayer money.
Mr. Shirley, who rose to fame for exposing the Minneapolis Somali community’s stealing of public funds, moved his show to California.
Assembly member Mia Bonta, the wife of the state attorney general, didn’t like his act. She introduced a bill, AB2624, that would criminalize what Mr. Shirley and other journalists do. She is selling her anti-whistleblower scheme as immigrant rights.
The bill’s title: “Privacy for immigration support services providers.” Its summary: “The bill would also prohibit a person from posting on the Internet the personal information or image of a designated immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer, or other individuals residing at the same home address.”
Republican Assembly Member Carl DeMaio said AB2624 is aimed at hiding fraud, not protecting privacy.
“California Democrats are trying to intimidate citizen watchdog journalists and protect waste and fraud happening in far-left-wing NGOs,” he said, referring to nonprofits that soak up taxpayer money spoon-fed by Democrats. “AB 2624 can only be described as the ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act.’”
Mr. Shirley invaded Sacramento and did the same thing to Democrats that he does to fraudsters. He followed them around, asking why they were trying to make him a criminal.
He has posted his anti-fraud tours on X and YouTube.
“Here is the full 40 minutes of my crew and I exposing California fraud. Minnesota was big, but California is even bigger,” he said. “We uncovered over $170,000,000 in fraud as these fraudsters live in luxury with no consequences. … These fraudsters have been able to defraud American taxpayers for years without any pushback from the public and politicians.”
You would think Democrats would stand and applaud a courageous journalist. Nope. Today’s party ignores fraud, knowing it helps on Election Day.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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