Massachusetts Welfare? Well, Foul! (II)

May 30, 2013

This is mother’s milk to our feisty local tabloid.

 

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The Boston Herald is on the Massachusetts welfare abuse scandal like Brown on Williamson. Today’s edition goes yesterday’s one better, with three – count ’em, three – full pages of pleased-as-punch coverage.

 

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You’ll notice there are two Truth Squad screeds (here and here) about Deval Patrick’s no-show response to State Auditor Suzanne Bump’s audit of the Department of Transitional Assistance, along with one Howie Carr mail-in, a high-dudgeon editorial,  and this editorial cartoon.

 

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There’s also this roll call (You Asked for It!) of the Senate votes last week rejecting photo IDs on EBT cards 30-8. (Full vote here.)

 

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And this convenience store receipt purportedly showing a seven grand balance on someone’s EBT card.

 

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It just doesn’t get any better than this for the Herald (from its editorial):

[I]t isn’t just the zombie-benefits problem.

It’s the individual who claimed to have had his EBT card lost or stolen — 127 times. It’s the use of a Massachusetts benefits card in St. Thomas — over a period of four months (surprise, they happened to be the coldest months of the year in New England). It’s the double-dipping, and all of the other clear signals of fraud that DTA missed along the way.

 

But the Herald’s not missing any.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, the DTA rumpus is just monkey-business as usual. Page One:

 

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But instead of piling on, the stately local broadsheet goes the misery-loves-company route.

 

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New Bay State slogan: Thank God for New Jersey, eh?

 

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Massachusetts Welfare? Well, Foul!

May 29, 2013

The new audit of the Massachusetts welfare system gets very – say it with me – different treatment in the local dailies today.

Boston Globe Page One:

 

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Lede:

Massachusetts gave millions of dollars in questionable public assis tance to people who were listed as dead, used multiple Social Security numbers to boost their payments, or apparently sold their benefit cards for cash over the past few years, according to a state audit released Tuesday.

The report by State Auditor Suzanne Bump is the latest study finding that the state did not do nearly enough to ensure that welfare benefits went only to qualified recipients. The head of the agency that administers the aid quit in January after another scathing report from the inspector general.

Bump’s audit found that 1,160 recipients were either dead or used a deceased person’s Social Security number, costing $2.4 million between July 2010 and April 2012.

It also flagged another $15.6 million in suspicious transactions from electronic benefit cards between 2010 and 2012, including cards that were used as far away as Alaska, Hawaii, or the US Virgin Islands, suggesting the recipients either no longer lived in Massachusetts or had extra cash for travel.

 

 

Helpful chart:

 

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Other fun facts to know and tell:

• The Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance “provides aid to roughly one in seven people in the state”

• That’s about 885,000 people

• Who receive $1.7 billion a year

• And drive the Boston Herald to distraction

Not surprisingly, Page One of today’s feisty local tabloid is sharp, if a bit hyperventilating:

 

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Inside, the gimme gals and guys get the usual double-barreled treatment, complete with the told-you-so front pages of yore:

 

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And Howie Carr mails in the usual about  the “Department of Terrorist Assistance,” although it’s probably safe to say Tamerlan Tsarnaev is not among the 1164 ghost riders.

Anyway, just for the record, here’s the Herald’s bottom line (note the “possible,” “suggesting,” and etc.):

 

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Listen – the hardworking staff hates paying taxes as much as the next guy, assuming the next guy isn’t Mitt Romney. And there’s no question the DTA has problems that should be fixed. But isn’t this being blown out of proportion a bit?

1164 out of 885,000?

$18 million out of $1.7 billion?

Really, there’s gotta be something better the Herald could hyperventilate about.

Then again, it wouldn’t sell as many papers, would it?

 

 

 

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Hark! The Herald! (Welfare Housecleaning Edition)

February 18, 2013

The Boston Herald does the full Whitman again, celebrating itself and singing itself over the latest Department of Transitional Assistance, well, transition.

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The chronology of the feisty local tabloid’s coverage:

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The Herald’s reflexive back-patting is smart on two fronts: 1) It reminds readers why the buy the paper in the first place; and 2) It saves money by outsourcing marketing efforts to the newsroom.

Meanwhile, back at the actual news report, it kicks off with some classic bureaucratic doublespeak:

Another top welfare official — who was on the job when the beleaguered agency discovered thousands of EBT recipients were unaccounted for — is on the way out amid a major department shake-up, the Herald has learned.

Stephanie Everett, the chief of staff at the Department of Transitional Assistance, told the Herald yesterday she’s leaving her $77,250 a year post and has no plans yet for another job.

“It’s just a new administration,” Everett told the Herald on the steps of her Mattapan home, referring to new Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz. “I don’t know if it’s cleaning house. They’re doing what they need to do to make sure that taxpayers’ money is spent the way it should have.”

 

Not cleaning house, yeah? Just a light dusting.

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Herald “Welfare Voter Push” Edition

August 8, 2012

The Boston Herald hit its favorite target – Elizabeth Warren – with a one-two punch this morning, starting with this piece:

Welfare voter push has GOP crying foul
Critics blast state’s Dems for ‘inside job’

The state has mailed out voter registration letters to nearly 500,000 welfare recipients, in a push sparked by a group led by former ACORN bigwigs that critics say is a naked bid to boost Democrats at the polls in November.

The letters, mailed last month by the state’s Department of Transitional Assistance, went out as Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren have been locked in a neck-and-neck race.

The welfare system’s get-out-the-vote push came in response to a suit brought by New England United for Justice (NEU4J), which is led by three former leaders of the controversial Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. ACORN was disbanded in 2010 amid a voter fraud scandal.

Yow. Then there’s the follow-up:

Brown blasts welfare vote group chaired by Warren’s daughter

HYANNIS — An exasperated U.S. Sen. Scott Brown today said a taxpayer-funded push by a group chaired by rival Elizabeth Warren’s daughter to register welfare recipients is “outrageous.”

“It’s like another thing you shake your head about. Here we go, we have Professor Warren’s daughter leading the charge at taxpayer expense to get welfare recipients out,” said Brown, who added he will fight just as hard for the votes of those on welfare. “It’s not about getting people out to vote, it’s the fact that Professor Warren’s daughter is leading the charge at taxpayer expense, getting out the vote for her mom …I think it’s outrageous and when does it end?”

Yikes – that’s about as high as Brown’s dudgeon gets.

But wait . . . there’s more. The Herald couldn’t resist taking a whack at the group organizing the voter push, hitting the trifecta with a piece headlined, “Group fueling registration doesn’t fall far from ACORN.” (Or maybe they couldn’t resist the pun.)

Regardless, the Globe finally jumped in the pool this afternoon with a web posting:

Scott Brown criticizes efforts to register welfare recipients

US Senator Scott Brown today criticized the state’s welfare department for sending voting registration forms to 478,000 people on public assistance, saying the mass mailing was a ploy to boost the ranks of Democratic voters and benefit rival Elizabeth Warren’s campaign.

The Globe piece also featured this response from the Warren campaign:

“For Brown to claim this is some kind of plot against him is just bizarre,” said campaign manager Mindy Myers, adding that the attack on Warren’s daughter was “ridiculous.

“His entire attack is built on efforts in multiple states to enforce a law passed almost 20 years ago with bipartisan support. Even the Bush Justice Department filed suit to enforce this provision of that law,” said Myers.

And, yes, the Globe did credit the Herald for breaking the story, for those of you keeping score at home.

 

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