California Keeps the COVID Gravy Train Running

As Craig Eyermann notes, the scale of pandemic relief fraud is growing, with $400 billion processed by the Department of Labor and $200 billion through the federal Small Business Administration. As those hunting down waste and fraud should know, pandemic payouts are still going on in California. 

In March 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order that effectively locked down the Golden State. When he lifted the state of emergency in February 2023, Gov. Newsom kept a key program in place. Consider some of the projects the California COVID Workplace Outreach Project continues to fund.

The Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE) “mobilized over 700,000 voters” in 2016 and looks askance at Proposition 13, the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation, passed by California voters in 1978. In a similar style, the Alianza Coachella Valley holds political candidate forums and lobbies on legislation.

The Alliance for Californians Community Empowerment aims “to shift power relations by changing the systems that create oppression” and supports rent control in that cause. 

The Indígena Community Organizing Project practices “community organizing and policy advocacy.” The group will “continue to advocate for additional state-held dollars and expanded considerations for undocumented Californians.” (emphasis added) 

The Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) “organizes the low-wage and immigrant Pilipinx communities in the United States.” The PWC works through “coalitions and mobilizations.” The Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), founded in 1972, seeks “to build collective power with other oppressed communities to demand better living and working conditions and justice for all people.” 

The Central California Environmental Justice Network,  educates people about “the negative impacts of fracking” and engages in advocacy for the “adoption of more stringent regulations at the local and state level.” The Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Center was recently rebranded as the Donnelly Community Services Center, where founder Rosa Diaz is concerned with “quickly recommending people to gender-affirming care.” 

California’s COVID funding outreach also includes the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities, and the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, which “advances economic, racial, and social justice by building a just economy based on good jobs and healthy communities.” 

San Diego Assemblyman Carl DeMaio contended that the recipients were “not Covid-19 or healthcare experts. They’re not workforce safety experts. They are a political organization.” There was “nothing wrong with being a political organization,” DeMaio added, “but with their own money—not taxpayer money.” 

DeMaio also sought to learn how much each group had received since the program’s inception. Before any answers could emerge, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas removed DeMaio from the budget committee. The Speaker’s brother, Rick Rivas, is a member of the California Coastal Commission. This unelected body overrides scores of elected county and city governments on land-use issues and rides roughshod over property rights. 

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