Investigators say there was so much fraud in federal covid-relief programs that — even after two years of work and hundreds of prosecutions — they’re still just getting started.
In the midst of the pandemic the government gave unemployment benefits to the incarcerated, the imaginary, and the dead. It sent money to “farms” that turned out to be front yards. It paid people who were on the government’s “Do Not Pay List.” It gave loans to 342 people who said their name was “N/A.”
As the virus shuttered businesses and forced people out of work, the federal government sent a flood of relief money into programs aimed at helping the newly unemployed and boosting the economy. That included $3.1 trillion that former President Donald J. Trump approved in 2020, followed by a $1.9 trillion package signed into law in 2021 by President Biden.
But those dollars came with few strings and minimal oversight. The result: one of the largest frauds in American history, with billions of dollars stolen by thousands of people, including at least one amateur who boasted of his criminal activity on YouTube. …
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/business/economy/covid-pandemic-fraud.html?smid=tw-share”>Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud</a>
NY Times – August 16
Investigators say there was so much fraud in federal covid-relief programs that — even after two years of work and hundreds of prosecutions — they’re still just getting started. …
In the run up to the 2016 election, some in Hillary Clinton’s campaign felt sure that elevating the most extreme candidates in the GOP primary, like Donald Trump, could only help Democrats’ cause.
But if anyone felt giddy as Trump cruised through the primaries, squashing his more establishment rivals and drawing fierce criticism for his more outlandish statements, they were dismayed in November as he defeated Clinton.
It’s a scenario some Democrats are fearing they are about to watch in re-run form, as Democratic-aligned groups and campaigns have poured millions of dollars into Republican primaries in an attempt to boost far-right or election-denying candidates they believe will be easier for Democrats to beat in November. …
… In at least eight gubernatorial, House, and Senate races, Democratic candidates and groups have spent money to endear extreme candidates to GOP primary voters. The ads have tied candidates to Trump or highlighted their more hard-right views at a time in the election cycle when such messages are likely to help them among primary voters. The boosted group includes candidates who reportedly charteredbuses to the rally ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection or held hearings to question the 2020 election results.
Now that several of those candidates have become their party’s nominees, Democrats will find out if their more far-right positions really do turn off voters in the general election, as the strategy’s defenders believe. The tactic is being employed at a time when President Biden’s approval rating is under water and his party is bracing for losses in the midterm elections. Those who support the ads argue that Democrats need to do whatever it takes to win and that more extreme GOP candidates are often not that much more far-right than other Republicans in the field. …
I believe the reason insomnia sufferers hold out for (not just prefer) Zolpidem (Ambien) is that it is the one prescription sleep drug – that doesn’t feel at all like a drug. No hours of lingering numbness (OTC antihistamines), no all day yucky feeling (most or all other prescription drugs) – nor all day, sleep deprived, brain fog (no medicine at all).
You can cut a 10mg into thirds and take one third to catch the last two hours of sleep (my most regular use) and wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed – no drug after haze whatsoever.
Why, then, does the whole medical profession, lately, seem so down on Zolpidem? My doctor cut me off after 12 years on it (with different prescribers), my brother’s doctor cut him back from 10mg to 5 mg, my brother’s 60s age friend had hers cut off completely. A Zoom call nurse practitioner from Minded turned me down because of my age.
Me – slips and falls: if you break out the numbers, most of the serious damage comes from traffic accidents. At my age (78) my mother was still bringing home the first place trophies in the amateur ballroom dance contests. A lot of deep athletic ability in my family.
Me – driving: 28 years driving taxicabs in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Enough said?
Me — memory: Zolpidem doesn’t make you forget what you already know, doesn’t make you forget how processes work that you newly learned, may inhibit ability to make new memories of simple facts (what movie you watched Sunday). “Clinically significant” harm visited on less than 1%. After 12 years on the drug, if it causes me any impairment, any damage should have been visited long ago. * * * * * *
Today, 38 million Americans take Zolpidem (85% of all sleep med users). What is the medical profession going to do, take them all off Zolpidem just as they get old enough to need it most – condemn them to an old age of hours of daily antihistamine numbness, all day yucky drug left-over, or 19 hours or more in sleep deprived fog?
Sensible legal goal – once patients get it nailed down (in court?): If a patient refused a new improved fracture cast, leaving only an old model wrap an option, a doctor could not ethically refuse to offer the old style. Drug ditto: doctors should not be allowed to refuse Zolpidem if it is the only sleep aid the patient will accept – not if the patient would be better off with Zolpidem than without it. Goal #1!
Why do doctors today feel so ethically free to abandon insomniacs who will take only Zolpidem – no substitute or no treatment at all?
I suspect it is something about the incorporality of insomnia – that fails to light up their “midbrain radar” (that even migraine headaches show up on). They can’t measure it, can’t weigh it, can’t take its temperature, can’t sew it up, no idea where to put it back. 🙂
I suggest that insomniac patients make journals, day-by-day of their struggles living without Zolpidem – with or without substitute drugs. 30 day, 60 day, 90 day journals – will hopefully prevail at physicians’ motivation-gates — that insomniac patients have a truly unhealthy condition that MUST be dealt with.
Typical trouble day: At 10:30AM, will need to drive mother downtown. No antihistamine in the middle of the night (main effect lasts 4 hours, not safe driving, hours longer). Zolpidem would act for 2 hours after first 5 hours sleep (25 minute wait, 45 minutes sedated—can think if I wish to, 50 minutes more coming out of it), waking fit as a fiddle. Couldn’t sleep — took Trazodone, barely able to drive, barely safely.
Once we nail down the patient’s legally and ethically entitled choice – not to live in a permanent drug hangover or antihistamine numbness or no drug at all brain fog – because the medical profession is afraid we might slip and fall – then, we can spread the word to every civil law firm in the country – and get our lives back!!!
we are all different so what works for me may not work for you, but here goes
i lost all interest in medicine years ago.
now i don’t sleep much at night. dogs need to go out often, and one thing or another keeps me up or wakes me up, so i just made up my mind to get used to it. seems to work. make up for it with naps. oh, enough physical labor to make make tired by the end of the day seems to help a lot. internet seems to make it worse. have to manage my coffee carefully.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Sleep is the same for me except that I may have been that way longer – roughly since Vietnam although I really did not notice it much during the first decade back in the world because I had so much late night partying to catch up on.
I have to be cynical about this. When one sends money to a political party for campaign purposes, (and I do) they are going to spend much of it unwisely. American political campaigns are obviously a bountiful revenue stream for Big Media.
Two of the most prominent women in Alaskan Republican politics — Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin — appeared to be on divergent paths early Wednesday following the state’s special election and primary.
Ms. Murkowski, 65, spurned by former President Donald J. Trump, advanced to the general election in November in the Senate race, according to The Associated Press. Ms. Palin, 58, who had Mr. Trump’s backing, also advanced in the fall for an open House seat but was trailing her Democratic opponent. …
The support of Native voters was key to the strong showings of both Ms. Murkowski and Ms. Palin’s main Democratic rival, Mary Peltola, a former state lawmaker who is Yup’ik and who would become the first Alaska Native in Congress if elected. More than 15 percent of Alaska’s population identifies as Indigenous.
Still, final official results in the elections could take days and even weeks, as election officials in Alaska continue to collect and count mail-in ballots. …
(After losing her primary in Wyoming, she will be out of the House next year. She may just as well attempt a run a the GOP nomination as a ‘principled’ conservative anti-Trumper, maybe see if she can gain enuf support from disenchanted women & feminists of both genders who happen to be in the GOP. Could it split the GOP vote in 2024? Perhaps.)
Representative Liz Cheney said early Wednesday that she was “thinking” about running for president in 2024, a prospect that would test the national viability of a conservative, anti-Trump platform that failed resoundingly in Wyoming.
Ms. Cheney … also announced the formation of a political action committee, the Great Task, that would educate Americans about threats to democracy and oppose any effort by Mr. Trump to return to the White House. …
‘The Great Task’ – Abraham Lincoln – Gettysburg Address – November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The ‘Great Task’ being an allusion to a phrase in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the one about preserving guv’mint ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’, so that it does not perish from the earth.
If Liz Cheney, as a third-party candidate in 2024 throws the election into the House, which will presumably have a majority still of state delegations under GOP control – even if (hopefully) there is still an overall Dem majority of Representatives, then the GOP candidate – presumably Trump – will be seated for a second term. The Dem majority, reflecting numbers of voters, not number of states, does not matter in these circumstances.
This is what will happen if there is no Electoral Vote majority, which is one of the ways Trump expected to get re-elected in 2020 and is a worst-case outcome of three-candidate presidential elections. The GOP was hoping for this as part of the Big Lie strategy for 2020. They will not object if this happens in 2024. This is what is chiefly wrong about having more than two candidates in the presidential race.
Under current Electoral College rules (per the Constitution), this is a big part of the GOP advantage over the Dems. So, don’t be surprised if GOP zealots complain vigorously about something they’d like to see happen.
Certainly, the GOP would be even happier by then if there is an outright GOP majority by number of GOP Representatives, but it won’t matter as long as they control more state delegations than the Dems, as they do now. This is truly a reflection of a profound flaw in the Constitution that benefits states with smaller populations.
It could be that in 2024, if the GOP controls Congress that competition for the GOP presidential nom will be particularly fierce (if it looks like the decision is likely to be made in the House.) So fierce that Trump would be swept aside.
In favor of Ted Cruz maybe? Or Rand Paul? (Just spitballin’ here.)
(AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Justice Department to put forward proposed redactions as he committed to making public at least part of the affidavit supporting the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said that under the law, it is the government’s burden to show why a redacted version should not be released and prosecutors’ arguments Thursday failed to persuade him. He gave them a week to submit a copy of the affidavit proposing the information it wants to keep secret after the FBI seized classified and top secret information during a search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week. …
The Justice Department has adamantly opposed making any portion of the affidavit public, arguing that doing so would compromise its ongoing investigation, would expose the identities of witnesses and could prevent others from coming forward and cooperating with the government.
The attorneys for the news organizations, however, argued that the unprecedented nature of the Justice Department’s investigation warrants public disclosure.
“You can’t trust what you can’t see,” said Chuck Tobin, a lawyer representing the AP and several other news outlets.
In addition to ordering the redactions, the judge agreed to make public other documents, including the warrant’s cover sheet, the Justice Department’s motion to seal the documents and the judge’s order requiring them to be sealed.
Those documents showed the FBI was specifically investigating the “willful retention of national defense information,” the concealment or removal of government records and obstruction of a federal investigation. …
There’s something strange in the D.C. air these days. It smells a bit like … competence.
Seriously, it has been amazing to watch the media narrative on the Biden administration change. Just a few weeks ago President Biden was portrayed as hapless, on the edge of presiding over a failed presidency. Then came the Inflation Reduction Act, a big employment report and some good news on inflation, and suddenly we’re hearing a lot about his accomplishments.
But I still don’t think the media narrative gets it quite right. Biden has indeed accomplished a lot — in some ways more than he’s getting credit for, even now. On the other hand, America is a huge nation with a huge economy, and his policies don’t look as impressive when you compare them with the scale of the nation’s problems.
Furthermore, at this point Biden is arguably benefiting from the soft bigotry of low expectations. His policy achievements are big by modern standards, but they wouldn’t have seemed astounding in an earlier era — the era before the radicalization of the Republican Party made it almost impossible to pursue real solutions to real problems. …
As I see it, he came into office with three main domestic policy goals: investing in America’s fraying infrastructure, taking serious action against climate change and expanding the social safety net, especially for families with children. He got most of two and a bit of the third.
Last year’s infrastructure bill gets remarkably little media attention; only about a quarter of voters even know that it passed. But we should remember that Barack Obama wanted to invest in infrastructure but couldn’t; Donald Trump promised to do it but didn’t (and “It’s infrastructure week!” became a running joke); then Biden got it done.
By contrast, the Inflation Reduction Act, which is mainly a climate law, has received a lot of attention, and deservedly so. America is finally taking action against the biggest existential threat of our times. Energy experts believe that it will have large direct effects in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
These are significant achievements, and a big contrast with the last administration, whose only major domestic policy change was a tax cut that had almost no visible positive effects.
But when I see news reports describe these laws as “massive” or huge, I wonder whether the writers have done the math. The infrastructure law will add roughly $500 billion in spending over the next decade. The Inflation Reduction Act will increase spending by roughly an additional half trillion. A law to promote U.S. semiconductor production will add around $50 billion more. Overall, then, we’re talking about a bit more than $1 trillion in public investment over 10 years. …
… OK, I can already hear people yelling in response to any citation of Biden’s achievements, what about inflation? Indeed, the Biden administration failed to appreciate the risks of an inflation surge. However, so did many others, including the Federal Reserve (and yours truly). And it does seem worth pointing out that other countries, notably Britain, are also suffering from high inflation, even though they didn’t follow anything like Biden-style policies. In fact, Britain’s inflation problem looks worse than ours, on multiple dimensions.
And both the public and financial markets expect inflation to be brought under control. So it doesn’t look as if this admittedly big misstep will do enduring damage.
Again, I don’t want to sound Trumpian and claim that Biden is doing an awesome job, a perfect job, the best job anyone has ever seen. What he has done — and was doing even before the media narrative turned — is deal, reasonably effectively, with the real problems America is facing.
The thing is, what we’re getting from Biden should be routine in a wealthy, sophisticated nation; indeed, it was routine before the G.O.P. took its hard right turn. At this point, however, competent, reality-based government comes as a shock.
Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud
NY Times – August 16
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/business/economy/covid-pandemic-fraud.html?smid=tw-share”>Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud</a>
NY Times – August 16
Investigators say there was so much fraud in federal covid-relief programs that — even after two years of work and hundreds of prosecutions — they’re still just getting started. …
Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud
Playing with fire? Democrats who are boosting extreme candidates in GOP primaries will find out in the fall.
Boston Globe – August 15
I believe the reason insomnia sufferers hold out for (not just prefer) Zolpidem (Ambien) is that it is the one prescription sleep drug – that doesn’t feel at all like a drug. No hours of lingering numbness (OTC antihistamines), no all day yucky feeling (most or all other prescription drugs) – nor all day, sleep deprived, brain fog (no medicine at all).
You can cut a 10mg into thirds and take one third to catch the last two hours of sleep (my most regular use) and wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed – no drug after haze whatsoever.
Why, then, does the whole medical profession, lately, seem so down on Zolpidem? My doctor cut me off after 12 years on it (with different prescribers), my brother’s doctor cut him back from 10mg to 5 mg, my brother’s 60s age friend had hers cut off completely. A Zoom call nurse practitioner from Minded turned me down because of my age.
Doctor’s lately arriving qualms: reports of (maybe doubled) household falls and traffic accidents, memory impairments, weird sleep walking behaviors.
* * * * * *
Me – slips and falls: if you break out the numbers, most of the serious damage comes from traffic accidents. At my age (78) my mother was still bringing home the first place trophies in the amateur ballroom dance contests. A lot of deep athletic ability in my family.
Me – driving: 28 years driving taxicabs in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Enough said?
Me — memory: Zolpidem doesn’t make you forget what you already know, doesn’t make you forget how processes work that you newly learned, may inhibit ability to make new memories of simple facts (what movie you watched Sunday). “Clinically significant” harm visited on less than 1%. After 12 years on the drug, if it causes me any impairment, any damage should have been visited long ago.
* * * * * *
Today, 38 million Americans take Zolpidem (85% of all sleep med users). What is the medical profession going to do, take them all off Zolpidem just as they get old enough to need it most – condemn them to an old age of hours of daily antihistamine numbness, all day yucky drug left-over, or 19 hours or more in sleep deprived fog?
Sensible legal goal – once patients get it nailed down (in court?): If a patient refused a new improved fracture cast, leaving only an old model wrap an option, a doctor could not ethically refuse to offer the old style. Drug ditto: doctors should not be allowed to refuse Zolpidem if it is the only sleep aid the patient will accept – not if the patient would be better off with Zolpidem than without it. Goal #1!
Why do doctors today feel so ethically free to abandon insomniacs who will take only Zolpidem – no substitute or no treatment at all?
I suspect it is something about the incorporality of insomnia – that fails to light up their “midbrain radar” (that even migraine headaches show up on). They can’t measure it, can’t weigh it, can’t take its temperature, can’t sew it up, no idea where to put it back. 🙂
I suggest that insomniac patients make journals, day-by-day of their struggles living without Zolpidem – with or without substitute drugs. 30 day, 60 day, 90 day journals – will hopefully prevail at physicians’ motivation-gates — that insomniac patients have a truly unhealthy condition that MUST be dealt with.
Typical trouble day: At 10:30AM, will need to drive mother downtown. No antihistamine in the middle of the night (main effect lasts 4 hours, not safe driving, hours longer). Zolpidem would act for 2 hours after first 5 hours sleep (25 minute wait, 45 minutes sedated—can think if I wish to, 50 minutes more coming out of it), waking fit as a fiddle. Couldn’t sleep — took Trazodone, barely able to drive, barely safely.
Once we nail down the patient’s legally and ethically entitled choice – not to live in a permanent drug hangover or antihistamine numbness or no drug at all brain fog – because the medical profession is afraid we might slip and fall – then, we can spread the word to every civil law firm in the country – and get our lives back!!!
PS My extra hours-numbing, OTC substitute — Diphenhydramine: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288546#Taking-anticholinergics-for-more-than-3-years-linked-to-higher-dementia-risk
Denis
we are all different so what works for me may not work for you, but here goes
i lost all interest in medicine years ago.
now i don’t sleep much at night. dogs need to go out often, and one thing or another keeps me up or wakes me up, so i just made up my mind to get used to it. seems to work. make up for it with naps. oh, enough physical labor to make make tired by the end of the day seems to help a lot. internet seems to make it worse. have to manage my coffee carefully.
Coberly,
Sleep is the same for me except that I may have been that way longer – roughly since Vietnam although I really did not notice it much during the first decade back in the world because I had so much late night partying to catch up on.
I have to be cynical about this. When one sends money to a political party for campaign purposes, (and I do) they are going to spend much of it unwisely. American political campaigns are obviously a bountiful revenue stream for Big Media.
dobbs
worried citizens are a bountiful revenue stream for politicians.
Politicians buy yachts (err, houseboats) & Maseratis.
Political parties throw money at Big Media.
(Not final) results from Alaska’s Open Primary
NY Times – August 17
Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin Survive Primary Battles, but a Democrat Breaks Through
Liz Cheney says she’s ‘thinking’ about running for president in 2024
NY Times – August 17
(After losing her primary in Wyoming, she will be out of the House next year. She may just as well attempt a run a the GOP nomination as a ‘principled’ conservative anti-Trumper, maybe see if she can gain enuf support from disenchanted women & feminists of both genders who happen to be in the GOP. Could it split the GOP vote in 2024? Perhaps.)
‘The Great Task’ – Abraham Lincoln – Gettysburg Address – November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The ‘Great Task’ being an allusion to a phrase in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the one about preserving guv’mint ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’, so that it does not perish from the earth.
If Liz Cheney, as a third-party candidate in 2024 throws the election into the House, which will presumably have a majority still of state delegations under GOP control – even if (hopefully) there is still an overall Dem majority of Representatives, then the GOP candidate – presumably Trump – will be seated for a second term. The Dem majority, reflecting numbers of voters, not number of states, does not matter in these circumstances.
This is what will happen if there is no Electoral Vote majority, which is one of the ways Trump expected to get re-elected in 2020 and is a worst-case outcome of three-candidate presidential elections. The GOP was hoping for this as part of the Big Lie strategy for 2020. They will not object if this happens in 2024. This is what is chiefly wrong about having more than two candidates in the presidential race.
Under current Electoral College rules (per the Constitution), this is a big part of the GOP advantage over the Dems. So, don’t be surprised if GOP zealots complain vigorously about something they’d like to see happen.
Certainly, the GOP would be even happier by then if there is an outright GOP majority by number of GOP Representatives, but it won’t matter as long as they control more state delegations than the Dems, as they do now. This is truly a reflection of a profound flaw in the Constitution that benefits states with smaller populations.
It could be that in 2024, if the GOP controls Congress that competition for the GOP presidential nom will be particularly fierce (if it looks like the decision is likely to be made in the House.) So fierce that Trump would be swept aside.
In favor of Ted Cruz maybe? Or Rand Paul? (Just spitballin’ here.)
Does anyone believe that might be likely?
Assuming she makes it into Congress, Sarah Palin will be a contendah!
Judge appears willing to unveil some of Mar-a-Lago affidavit
Boston Globe – August 18
What Biden Has — and Hasn’t — Done
NY Times – Paul Krugman – Aug 18