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Originally posted by onegeek:

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Originally posted by Sig2340:
And here is another example the utter incompetence of the Minnesota.gov.

This excerpt is from the Minnesota Department of Human Services Child Care Center website

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Facility requirements

Floor plan and designated areas: Indoor and outdoor space to be used for child care must be designated on the facility floor plan.

Outdoor activity area: Outdoor space must be at least 1,500 square feet total and at least 75 square feet per child; be within 2000 feet of the center; be enclosed if adjacent to traffic and other hazards; be free of litter and other hazards; and have the required outdoor large muscle equipment.

Indoor space: The licensed capacity is limited by the amount of indoor space. A minimum of 35 square feet is required for each child.

I don't recall seeing a single playground at any of these fraudulent day cares.

The children play in the street, of course. Just like a daycare in Mogadishu.

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Originally posted by egregore:
The more of this I hear about, as well as the denial, deflection and denigration ...



And those words all start with D.

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Christina Aguayo

House Republicans successfully stripped a spending provision inserted by Rep. Ilhan Omar, preventing what the GOP said was yet another blatant attempt to steal federal tax dollars by giving them to a fake organization in Minnesota.

Critics are saying even though Omar is on the hot seat for her connections to fraud in Minnesota, she continues to try to help Somali migrants steal money.

Omar, a Somali migrant recently added the earmark to give over $1 million from the DOJ to Generation Hope MN, a Somali-led NGO billed as a substance abuse clinic.
This provision was part of a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, but GOP lawmakers found it and eliminated it.

Generation Hope MN, claims to combat drug addiction and substance use disorders in the Somali migrant community.

However, the group is being accused of fraud, and its address is listed as an office space above a Somali restaurant - not at a medical facility.

The "clinic" is housed in upper-level offices above Sagal Restaurant and Coffee, a Somali eatery.

Run by three migrants who all list the same residential home in Minneapolis as their primary address on IRS filings, raising concerns about potential conflicts.
Co-founder Abdirahman Warsame leads the group.

Despite not having records or significant income, the organization (and Omar) wanted $1 million to expand services, but there is no evidence of any success or auditing in the proposal.

Leading the charge to ax Omar's provision was Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who blasted the earmark as part of a "staggering" wave of Minnesota fraud that represents "just the tip of the iceberg."

"I raised the issue, and fortunately, the House has now stripped that earmark out of that spending bill. But again, this is how easy money has been flowing to bad actors in Minnesota!"

Omar says the Somali community needs the money, and people investigating the fraud are racist.

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[B]WTOP.com: Maryland Labor Dept. missed chance to recover $760 million in overpaid unemployment, audit says

Maryland overpaid $807.4 million in unemployment benefits since the COVID-19 pandemic and missed the opportunity to recover $760 million of that amount because it took too long do to so, state auditors said.

The report published Friday by the Office of Legislative Audits covered unemployment benefit paid out between Nov. 16, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2025, when states were flush with federal cash to help them through the pandemic and the sudden and historic loss of jobs that came with it. The chance to collect many of those overpayments passed in May 2025, the auditors said.

“That is quite concerning to me when we are not good stewards of taxpayer money,” said Sen. Shelly Hettleman (D-Baltimore County), co-chair of the Joint Audit and Evaluation Committee. “We have a (budget) shortfall, and we need to make sure that our money is spent on the priorities and the values we adhere to.”

Labor Secretary Portia Wu said her department takes the findings of the audit “very seriously” and that it is working to recover as much as it can going forward. But she also noted that “about 90%” of the unrecoverable overpayments would have fallen under the administration of Gov. Larry Hogan (R), and that much of the money involved would not have been state funds, but federal money that states received during the pandemic.

“We had been working on addressing these underlying problems far before these audit findings,” Wu said Friday, noting that the department has recovered “over $500 million in fraudulent, overpaid claims in 2025” and is “pursuing another $1.3 billion in overpayments.”

The Labor Department’s Division of Unemployment Insurance collects unemployment insurance taxes from employers and distributes unemployment benefits. The department explains on its website that “overpayments can occur for several reasons, including unreported wages, changes in work availability, or identity theft or fraud committed by a third party, which was particularly an issue during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

During the pandemic, the federal government offered states additional money to help keep up with surging unemployment claims at the time.

“We all know that the unemployment system had enormous, enormous strains during COVID and it just wasn’t functional in the way it needed to be during that crisis,” Hettleman said. “And then there were lots of starts and stops to get it up and running, and then there were legal issues and lots of concerns about fraud.”

State auditors found that the unemployment division “did not timely pursue recovery of claimant overpayments totaling $807.4 million resulting in up to $760.7 million that is no longer collectable as of May 2025.”

The labor department argues that the unrecoverable overpayments are closer to $600 million. Wu also noted that part of the collection of those overpayments were stalled in January 2022 by a legal challenge, which did not lift until September 2023.

But the audit notes that the department did not have “sufficient” overpayment collection even after the suspension ended, “resulting in an additional $33.6 million in overpayments not being adequately pursued.”

In response, the department said there was “necessary back-end work to resume collection activities” which led to additional delays after the suspension was lifted.

“Many of these issues, I think it’s over 90% of these overpayments were prior to this administration and during the pandemic,” Wu said. “Many of them may have been fraudulent. I can’t go back in time to change what was done. But I think we’re focused on doing our very best to recover as much as possible going forward.

“Some of these unpursued claims are very old. So even if we had been able to take action slightly earlier, many of these payments are not recoverable because they’re older,” Wu said.

“Obviously if actions had been taken closer in time to those overpayments, perhaps more of them could have been recovered. But I couldn’t have taken any action before that, before that 2023 window,” when the legal suspension was lifted, she said.

Meanwhile, some Marylanders are getting hit with notices saying that they owe money to the state for unemployment benefits, some that date back during the COVID-19 pandemic years.

Wu acknowledges that the notices from so far back are likely leading to confusion among Marylanders, especially those who may have been subjected to identity theft and fraud, which was prevalent during the pandemic.

The audit comes just days before the start of the 2026 General Assembly, when lawmakers will be grappling with an estimated $1.6 billion deficit as they prepare the fiscal 2027 budget.

It’s not clear how much the unrecoverable funds were lost state dollars. Wu says that that most of the lost funds were federal COVID-19 assistance, so the lost dollars would “not impact” the Maryland unemployment insurance fund.

“Because of the overwhelming majority of benefits during that time were special federal benefits, even if they are recovered, they go immediately back to the U.S. Treasury,” she said.

Hettleman is skeptical, especially as the state faces a $1.6 billion budget shortfall. Every state dollar counts.

“There was quite a bit of delay in trying to get that money back and determine whether the state actually overpaid people,” she said. “I still have concerns in why did it take so long for the department to take some action to address those issues. And I don’t have a good answer to that right now, but we will try to get one.”

The audit also found additional oversight issues involving potentially fraudulent unemployment benefit payments, as well as two cyber security-related findings that are redacted from public view.

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Bessent is Angry – Minnesota Governor Walz Refused to Provide any Security for Treasury Secretary

It appears that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is about to discover what happens when you anger the Treasury Secretary, who happens to be the IRS Commissioner.
WATCH: