Californians have a right to be angry about Minnesota. It’s getting all the federal government attention for its illegal immigration, street violence, fraud and graft when California, in fact, is the king of all those civic sins.
Yes, Minnesota and its lead city, Minneapolis, are impressive in the scale of fraud, estimated currently at billions of dollars, according to the Cato Institute’s recent “Fraud Update.” Not bad for a blue state, especially one with just 5.8 million people.
But let’s be honest. Minnesota’s inhabitants are mere pikers compared to those in the Golden State. There, the level of fraud and corruption, immigrant and otherwise, has reached shocking levels.
As the state’s plans to hike taxes on anyone who’s been successful drives more people from the state, it’s left with fewer solid citizens, and more noncitizens, crooked politicians, corrupt “foundations” and charities.
This is not just opinion, in case you’re wondering. As the jokey-but-dead serious“Wall Street Apes” X account reports, cribbing from a Fox News Report:
The fraud being exposed in California is INSANE
— 18% of THE WHOLE COUNTRY’S home health care billing is coming out of Los Angeles County
— One doctor billed the government $120 million in a single year claiming to oversee 1,900 patients
— With almost 2,000 hospice agencies, Los Angeles County has more than 36 states combined and 30X MORE than the whole state of Florida and New York
‘How is that possible? And take a look at this map, a cluster of 287 hospice providers, in a two-mile radius, some in strip malls, unmarked buildings, even a wrecking yard and vacant lot. All of it is just paperwork. I could fill that out in Kazakhstan if I want and get a hospice license waiting for me.’
And this is only one type of fraud of many now practiced in-state.
How about the state’s homeless people. They’ve become a major multi-billion dollar industry under the last two woke-progressive Democrat California governors, Jerry Brown (2011-2019) and Gavin Newsom (2019-today).
It’s gotten so bad even comedians now lament the state’s condition.
“The homeless, they lose $20 billion, but they want more money for it,” Saturday Night Live alumnus David Spade quipped on Bill Maher’s show. “That’s why people get tired of paying taxes and going, what are you doing? Gavin Newsom just vetoed a bill asking for an audit of where the money for homeless goes. He said, not a chance. You’re not gonna see that. That’s the problem.”
As the old saying goes, this is the tip of the iceberg.
Those all aren’t fraud numbers, of course, but they are fraud targets. The amount is staggering. The California State Auditor’s report for 2025 estimated $70 billion in total fraud. Yes, $70 billion with a “b.”
This, in a state that has lost millions of taxpaying inhabitants, according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California report. Average citizens are leaving due to out-of-control housing prices and a lack of jobs, as companies and entrepreneurs flee the outright hostile business climate.
“During the height of the pandemic, the flows out of the state became so large that almost every demographic and socioeconomic group experienced net losses,” according to the report.
Why leave? Another recent study from the Transparency Foundation finds that the typical middle-class family pays the equivalent of a $29,753.16 cost-of-living penalty in Cali. No wonder they’re leaving by the thousands.
Even so, you used to hear that California had one thing in abundance: billionaires. Not anymore. With the state’s ballot initiative to seize billionaires’ wealth with a 5% surtax, the rich are fleeing. Why take chances?
As the California Post reports, “Big-money billionaires, including Larry Ellison and Sergey Brin, are flocking to ritzy little enclaves at the California-Nevada border to scoop up property and seemingly escape the Golden State’s proposed ‘billionaire tax.’”
So long, tax dollars. With deficits of up to $35 billion a year expected, who pays? The middle class. And who gets the blame? California’s ruling Democrats.
For 33 of the last 35 years, Democrats have controlled both houses of the Legislature. And while California had Republican governors for 14 of those years, the state’s weak-governor system ensures the Legislature, not the governor, rules.
As Democrats move further toward the extreme left, their elected officials become more radical and beholden to disastrously far-left ideas. And they know the graft and the grift will go unnoticed in a state that they, and only they, control.
“Over the least 10 years, 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges,” the CalCoastNews wrote in 2024. “That total exceeds the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois.”
Of that number, “more than 50 key political figures and executives in Los Angles and San Francisco have been convicted since 2019. Many more . . . have been investigated or resigned after allegations against them surfaced.”
So, Californians refuse to play second fiddle to the corrupt, wasteful and rampant leftism other wanna-be states such as Minnesota want to boast about. But California is the real corruption king.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
