Corruption

When can we call it just what it is...

I don’t make such claims lightly.

Our previous Director of The Department of Health and Welfare, Alex Adams closed down a program for families to care for their disabled children funded with federal money with such claims. Back when I was on the Board of H&W, when there was a board, before the legislature in its wisdom cancelled the board, I asked him if any accusations of fraud were referred to our Attorney General. He mumbled something. No prosecutions have followed.

So a director, appointed by our Governor can shut down a funded program on unfounded allegations.

I get it. You conservative Republicans don’t want any taxpayer dollars going to the “unfit, the needy, the disabled”. You just want our taxpayer dollars going to families who want their kids to go to private, Christian schools.

Please, if you are concerned about fraud, you Conservative Idaho Republicans, wake up and watch $186M dollars shoot out to folks a few legislators think should get it.

For that’s what our Senator Crapo championed, and our congressional delegation (all Trump lackeys) voted for. According to the federal website, Idaho has received $186M dollars and it is in some account somewhere at the Idaho DHW.

But the Idaho legislature must approve any of this spending. They have set the delegating committee as 8 members, all Republican, but what does that mean here in Idaho?

The Department has great plans. I apologize for my cynicism. When I read the plans, they sound like gobbledygook. Please read them, you folks out there in rural Idaho and tell me if that’s what you think you need.

There’s a lot of cyber, technology, AI references in there. Just who do you think is going to get that money? Not Syringa General Hospital, or Clearwater Valley, or Lost Rivers. No, these grants will go to the big companies selling these services, whose employees live in Seattle and San Francisco.

We are getting fleeced. Our national debt is exploding, our health care system is a mess, and this grant program throws more dog bits to a very fat dog.

And our legislators have designed a system to funnel that money to whomever buys them the best lunch.

I hate to tell you, but we here in Idaho are small potatoes. A million-dollar grant can be awarded for a persuading $50 lunch.

And the Co-Chair of this committee, Jordan Redman has already faced charges of self-serving as a public servant.

So legislators could be acting badly. This is just old news. I’ve seen it before, maybe you have too.

Here’s the crippling coda.

The federal legislation to send this $1B to Idaho included a stipulation that the state would continue to support the programs developed.

Can you imagine the Idaho legislature coughing up another $200M a year to the Idaho DHW to fund AI kiosks in our small towns? And what would these AI kiosks do to help small communities thrive?

We are ripe for corruption. I have seen it in our Capitol. A person in charge of dispersing grants for school internet fudged the granting process. And that was just $25M. Somebody sued, the court found the process bad, and Idaho lost.

Now we are upping the ante.

Forking out grants while you are slicing the Medicaid program may hope to soften the blow. That’s just feeding into the deep corruption we already have.

Instead we need to be asking some very fundamental questions.

Should we all have access to healthcare?

What should our basic healthcare look like?

How should this system be paid for?

The United States pays per person almost twice what the next country in the world pays. We are rich. And we are wasting a wonderful opportunity to be great.