Welfare Fraud In Blue Cities: How Pervasive Is The Kleptocracy?

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  • If you keep up with current events at all, it is unlikely that you have missed in the past week the explosion of the Minnesota Somali welfare fraud scandal into the national, and even international, news.

  • Not that the enormous Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota is something new. The bloggers at Powerline, who are based in Minnesota, have been covering the subject since at least 2018. Here is a May 2018 City Journal piece by Scott Johnson (of Powerline), reporting on an investigation of Somali-owned daycare centers in Minneapolis suspected of stealing millions by billing the government for inflated number of enrollees.

  • But things really got going when the pandemic hit in 2020-21. Minnesota became ground zero for Somali fraudsters setting up sites supposedly to feed hungry children, and collecting millions for meals that were never prepared or served. Federal indictments for this fraud — including 47 people charged in the first indictment — began to issue in 2022. Dozens of articles at Powerline have traced the scandal since that time, as the revealed scope of the fraud has gradually gone from the millions to the hundreds of millions, and most recently into the billions of dollars.

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Even "Progressives" Are Now Allowed To Notice That New York's Climate Plans Are Crumbling

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  • Today I spent the day with my excellent collaborator Richard Ellenbogen cross-examining witnesses at the New York Public Service Commission’s hearing on whether the pending rate increase request of our utility Con Edison should be approved. We had a lot of fun. Although the hearing was theoretically open to the public, they had no live video feed, and you had to register in advance to attend in person. It looked like everybody there was an interested party.

  • At the close of the hearing, we were invited (along with everybody else) to file a post-hearing brief by next Friday, December 12. The hearing provided us with lots of good material, and we will be putting together a good scathing screed as our contribution. You can look forward to a post on the subject next Friday or Saturday.

  • But meanwhile, there has been other news on the New York Climate Act front. On November 25 a Washington think tank called the Progressive Policy Institute put out a Report with the title “NEW YORK'S CLIMATE CROSSROADS: ASSURING AFFORDABLE ENERGY.”‍ ‍The Report takes serious note that New York’s “climate” regime is in big trouble.

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Some Other Parties Weigh In On The Con Edison Rate Case

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  • In my last post I linked to, and quoted portions of, the objection submitted by myself and two colleagues to the pending settlement of the rate increase request of our local utility, Con Edison. The gist of our objection is that the ratepayers should not be forced to pay to build infrastructure for delivery of “renewable” electricity that does not exist.

  • Our objection was filed on the day before Thanksgiving, November 26. That day had been set as the due date for all statements either in support or opposed to the pending settlement, which is referred to as the Joint Proposal of “JP.” And thus, on the same date, numerous other parties to the proceeding also filed statements, either in favor or opposed to the JP. The large majority were in favor — which is not surprising, given that to reach a settlement that might stick they needed the support of a large majority of the parties.

  • Most of the parties who had joined the case had sought from the outset to characterize their position as standing up for the ratepayers by opposing excessive revenue demands from Con Edison. And yet here at the settlement phase we find nearly all of these parties signing on to large amounts of spending by Con Edison that are completely wasteful, in that they provide for delivery of non-existent electricity and support for impossible Climate Act goals that are not happening.

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Objection Filed Against Con Edison Request For Rate Increase

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  • As I have mentioned here on a couple of occasions, I have joined with two colleagues to intervene in the regulatory proceeding where our local electric utility, Con Edison, has made its most recent request for a large rate increase.

  • My colleagues in this enterprise are Roger Caiazza, who blogs as the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York, and Richard Ellenbogen, a Cornell-trained engineer who as his day job runs a factory in Westchester County.

  • After a “deregulation” that took place in the 1990s, Con Edison almost entirely got out of the business of generating electricity, so this case is about the rates for delivery of the electricity, rather than generation. The basis for Con Edison’s request for a rate increase is substantially that it wants to build lots of new infrastructure, like additional cables, substations and transformers, to deliver incremental power to support widespread electrification of vehicles and buildings as part of New York State’s goal of “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions.

  • That idea might make some sense if there were large amounts of zero-emissions electricity ready to be sent to New York City to be used for electrifying the buildings and vehicles. But in fact it is the opposite: a very large majority of the electricity that Con Edison delivers is generated by natural gas — which means that electrifying buildings and vehicles doesn’t reduce GHG emissions at all, and probably increases the emissions.

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A Few Markers On The Road To The Demise Of The Climate Apocalypse

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  • For a long time it has been obvious to me, and to any thinking person, that the climate apocalypse scare would sooner or later collapse of its own absurdity. But how? And when?

  • During the past couple of weeks I have noted a few markers. Maybe you have noted others. Here are a few.

  • The latest of the big annual UN climate conferences, known as “COP” (Conference of Parties), this one number 30, took place this year in Belem, Brazil, from November 10 to 21.

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At The New York Krazy Klimate Konference, 2025 Edition

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  • Two years ago, in November 2023, my friend Roger Caiazza and I attended a conference put on by a local news source called City & State. They called their conference the “Clean Energy New York Summit: The Path to Sustainability.” I called it the Krazy Klimate Konference, and I wrote about it in a post on November 18, 2023 titled “At The New York Krazy Klimate Konference.”‍ ‍

  • Last year both Roger and I skipped the Konference, and this year Roger again wisely decided to stay home in Syracuse. But I was morbidly curious as to how this crowd of climate grifters and subsidy farmers would react to the rapid derailment of their gravy train during the first ten months of President Trump’s second term. And for me, the venue was only about a 10 minute subway ride away, at the southern tip of Manhattan. So I rounded up my daughter Jane (who had to trek in from Queens) to accompany me, and off we went.

  • This year they slightly re-titled the Konference to “Energy Infrastructure Summit: New York’s Path to Sustainability.” On the surface, it was remarkably similar to the program of two years ago, and to hear the words of the speakers, it was as if nothing was wrong. But with a little reading between the lines, the changes were big.

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