Welcome to Washington state, where the government will happily mail six-figure checks to a house with no children in it and then call it a hate crime when a journalist knocks on the door to ask about it.
An investigation by The Center Square, highlighted by USA Journal, found multiple childcare operations in Washington collecting massive taxpayer subsidies while caring for exactly zero children. One West Seattle address raked in over $229,000 in nine months. When reporters showed up and knocked, the residents told them plainly: "There is no daycare here. There never has been." Some of these phantom operations were pulling in over $20,000 a month for the very demanding work of watching nobody.
Now here is where a normal story would pivot to the part where state officials launch an investigation, freeze payments, and start asking hard questions. This is not a normal story. This is Washington.
Instead of going after the fraudsters, Attorney General Nick Brown went after the reporters. He actually put out a press release encouraging people to report journalists who knock on doors to a hate crimes hotline. A hate crimes hotline. For knocking on a door. Brown wrote: "Showing up on someone's porch, threatening, or harassing them isn't an investigation. Neither is filming minors who may be in the home. This is unsafe and potentially dangerous behavior. I encourage anyone experiencing threats or harassment to either contact local law enforcement or our office's Hate Crimes & Bias Incident Hotline."
So to be clear, if you set up a fake daycare and collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state for services you never provided to children who do not exist, the Attorney General has your back. But if you are a journalist who dares to ask where the money went, you might get reported to a hotline designed for actual victims of hate.
This is not even a new trick. Minnesota had a massive daycare fraud scandal. California has had its own version. The pattern is identical every time: fraudsters identify government childcare subsidy programs with minimal verification, set up fake operations, collect taxpayer money by the truckload, and count on officials who would rather protect the program's reputation than admit it is being looted.
The COVID era childcare funding expansion poured hundreds of billions into these programs with verification requirements so thin you could see through them. The logic was that requiring proof might discourage eligible families. The result was an open invitation for every con artist in America to start a daycare on paper and start cashing checks.
No state official in Washington has announced an investigation or a crackdown. The legislature did pass some reforms last session, which is the governmental equivalent of putting a band-aid on a house fire.
The USDA under the Trump administration has said it is going after states that block federal fraud verification efforts. Washington seems like a strong candidate for that list, given that its top law enforcement official is currently more interested in investigating journalists than investigating the people stealing public money.
When a business collects taxpayer funds, taxpayers get to ask questions. That is not harassment. That is how the system is supposed to work. But in Washington, the system is apparently working exactly as intended, just not for the people paying the bills.
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
