Nothing new for these Corrupt Scumbags on the Left
Two Georgia elections workers and other Middle Georgia women have been charged for their role in a healthcare fraud scheme.
Tarshea Fudge-Riley, elections supervisor for Macon County and Lamonica Lakes, election clerk and deputy election registrar allegedly participated in a years-long scheme to commit healthcare fraud.
The women allegedly submitted fraudulent insurance claims for mental health therapy sessions that never even happened.
“Federal prosecutors believe Fudge-Riley, who is the Chief Macon County BOE Supervisor, and Lakes, an elections clerk at the Macon County BOE, as well as Childs, were paid by James Ellis to knowingly create fake therapy session notes that were submitted to health insurance providers for “pre-payment review,”” WGXA reported.
And these are the people we are supposed to trust with elections.
Fudge-Riley and Lakes reportedly still work in the elections office.
The women received millions of dollars after submitting fraudulent claims.
A Montezuma therapist, two Macon County Board of Elections (BOE) officials and two other Middle Georgia women are facing federal charges for their connection to a years-long mental health care fraud scheme.
According to an indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Middle District of Georgia, Dawn James-Ellis, 54, Tarshea Fudge-Riley, 53, and Lamonica Lakes, 47, all from Montezuma, as well asa s 54-year-old Angela Childs of Vienna and 43-year-old Adrian Harris of Warner Robins were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud on March 10, 2026.
The grand jury indictment alleges that, from January 2019 to December 2022, James-Ellis, a licensed therapist operating her practice, Therapy On the Go in Montezuma, submitted several fraudulent insurance claims for mental health therapy sessions she knew never occurred to receive millions of dollars in payments from insurance companies.
Federal prosecutors believe Fudge-Riley, who is the Chief Macon County BOE Supervisor, and Lakes, an elections clerk at the Macon County BOE, as well as Childs, were paid by James Ellis to knowingly create fake therapy session notes that were submitted to health insurance providers for “pre-payment review.”
“Our health insurance programs, particularly those that provide benefits to our military servicemembers and their dependents, are vital to those who need assistance for medical treatment,” said U.S. Attorney Margaret Heap. “With our law enforcement partners, we will aggressively pursue those who fraudulently access those funds for their own personal gain.”
“The reach of this investigation extends beyond healthcare into the deliberate manipulation of federal programs designed to support honest small businesses,” said Special Agent-in-Charge, Jason J. Sargenski, Defense Criminal Investigative Service Southeast Field Office.
“By allegedly utilizing wire fraud to siphon resources from the Small Business Administration while simultaneously defrauding TRICARE, the defendant demonstrated a pattern of deceit that harms both the taxpayer and the integrity of our nation’s essential support systems. We remain dedicated to following the trail of fraud wherever it leads to ensure those who prioritize personal greed over public service are held fully accountable,” he said.
Los Angeles has lost its capacity to repair roads based on rigid, costly, greenie mandates. Lemmings-like, big cities like San Diego and San Francisco have followed.
ne of the enduring mysteries of California is how a state as big and advanced as it is, with as huge a tax base and as high a tax rate as it has, can have roads that look straight out of Kolkata.
Shawn Regan at the Manhattan Institute has delved into the matter in one of the worst-hit cities, Los Angeles, where its 7,500 miles of roading are in a complete state of dispair and only nine miles of them have seen any repairs at all in the last year.
Because in Los Angeles, basic roadwork has become too complicated, too expensive, and too legally treacherous.
Mandates meant to improve streets have instead made the work harder to carry out. So officials have found the path of least resistance: avoid repaving altogether.
...
At the center of the dispute is Measure HLA — the Healthy Streets LA initiative approved by voters in 2024.
The law requires the city to implement its long-standing mobility plan — adding bike lanes, bus lanes, crosswalks, and other safety features — whenever it repaves a street.
Those add-ons — curb reconstruction, protected bike lanes, new signal timing — can turn a routine resurfacing job into a multimillion-dollar project on a single corridor.
Faced with that reality, the city’s Bureau of Street Services landed on a simpler solution: Don’t repave the streets.
The results speak for themselves. In the two years since voters approved Measure HLA, the city has implemented just 300 feet of the improvements the law requires — roughly one city block.
It's not even wretched socialist Mayor Karen Bass who's directly causing this, it's the city's woke and gullible voters who voted this policy in, which mandates by law that for any street to get repaved after it becomes a gravel trail, it must install bike lanes, build handicapped-accessible curb ramps for the time of repair, bus lanes, crosswalks and all the other things that ensure complete accessibility, no matter what the condition of the street or how high the cost goes, which turns a simple street repairing of a few thousand dollars into a multi-million-dollar project just for the access ramps alone. If they can't get the full buffett of nice-to-have goodies for whatever the monstrous cost, then no street repairs for them. Regan points out that they are trying to work around this matter through something called 'major asphalt repairs' which means sending a truck around and dripping tar on the potholes, but it washes away in just weeks, and leaves the roads in the same shambles as before.
That's the law now in Los Angeles and that's why the city no longer repairs its roads.
Why bother, when just the first one in need of repair blows out the entire budget?
Not every city in California has laws this bad. San Jose, for one, has the nice-to-have lists but no legal mandate on installing all those goodies, which means the streets look like places normal people could live in -- Democrat gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahon, a former San Jose mayor who is running as a moderate and whose ads describe prioritizing nice-to-have things and need-to-have-things very likely was talking about San Jose's sensible roads policy, so he deserves credit for that.
San Diego, where I live, has bad policy already known as the Mobility Master Plan, which has resulted in an eight-year-wait for any road or sidewalk repairs, and now is moving to pass a measure called the Streets Masterplan which is literally modelled on the failed Healthy Streets LA disaster, "but scaled for San Diego" as its organizers say. They are gathering petition signatures now for it, so that San Diego can follow Los Angeles, lemmings-like, off the cliff.
Its organizers posted this on Reddit:
It’s called the Streets Master Plan, and it would require the City to actually add safety and mobility improvements (like crosswalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, and accessible signals) every time they repave a street — instead of just laying new asphalt and calling it a day. Basically: no more “pave now, maybe fix later.”
This plan has teeth — it’s legally binding, includes yearly public progress reports, and gives residents the right to hold the City accountable if it doesn’t follow through. It’s modeled after LA’s “Healthy Streets LA,” which voters passed overwhelmingly, but scaled for San Diego.
Want that dumpside look L.A. has after two years of this? Then by all means, sign the petition.
It's bad already in San Diego, with trucks driving around with tar streams to repair the crumbling asphalt instead of just repaving the roads.
My street, for instance, which is on a cul-de-sac neighborhood and doesn't get big traffic, looks like this; I took this picture this morning:
Image: Monica Showalter
Reporting like Regan's helps voters understand why this state is so badly run.
And the fact is, the state is going downhill fast. Los Angeles became a roadway disaster in just two years after passing the proposition. San Diego already seems to be transforming into a run-down stereotype of a Siberian street, creating the same effect as Siberia's extreme weather does on its roads, just with its Mobility Master Plan being enforced on the books.
Google AI reported from its various sources that more than a third of the city's roads were in bad condition and that was three years ago:
Based on a 2023 assessment, San Diego's overall street network has a Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of 63, placing it in the "Fair" category, down from 71("Satisfactory") in 2016. While many streets are fair, a 2024 report indicated that 34% of the city's roads are classified as "poor," "very poor," "serious," or "failed," with nearly 600 road segments rated as failing
Los Angeles is even worse, says Google AI:.
As of early 2026, the percentage of Los Angeles streets in good condition is estimated at roughly 60%, with projections suggesting a decline to a Pavement Condition Index of 56 next year due to a shift towards patching rather than resurfacing. The city's 7,500+ miles of streets face increasing deterioration, with repairs hampered by a significant budget deficit.
Key Findings on LA Street Conditions
Declining Quality: The city’s Pavement Condition Index is projected to drop to 56 next year, a 4% decline within a single year.
Repair Shortfall: Budget constraints are reducing the city’s ability to fully repave, leading to a reliance on patching.
Pothole Surge: Intense rainy seasons have caused a surge in pothole complaints, putting stress on the roughly 7,500 miles of city streets.
Numbers like these say the cities are going downhill fast.
Regan has done yeoman's work in getting to the bottom of why California's streets are so disgusting and why changing this law is essential if the state is ever going to recover. If a city or state can't repair its roads promptly and properly, then what good is it?
The state is becoming one vast pothole fast, all because of its sounds-nice greenie and special interest policies which benefit only contractors.
Iran, like the Democrats, wants to humiliate Trump. Whether he lets them is another question.
You and I both know that Iran is going to do everything possible to embarrass President Trump and the United States for the foreseeable future, if not until the sun expires. We cannot play Charlie Brown to Lucy with the football, though that would be endlessly amusing to what's left of the Iranian leadership, much as it was to Lucy.
When Trump announced that the Strait of Hormuz was opened, something I wrote about at this very venue, I turned to my wife and said, “For how long? You know they're going to screw around and go back on their word,” because that's what crazed Iranian rulers, tyrants, and would be dictators do.
I’m betting that Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister who declared that the strait was open for the remainder of the ceasefire period — and possibly permanently -- has been “disappeared,” or will be shortly, by his comrades in the IRGC. Well, maybe not disappeared, but hanging from a lamppost in downtown Tehran.
What is left of Iran’s heinous “leadership,” or what passes for it now — as fragmented as it is -- believes that, despite everything, they can claim victory if they meet only three conditions: that they are still alive after the war “ends,” that they can continue to occasionally and somewhat plausibly contradict Trump’s grandiose assertions and therefore embarrass the United States, and that true regime change hasn’t occurred by then and that they still control and terrify the populace. That may be a low bar, but, sadly, a realistic one. And an especially sad one for the 90+ million Iranians that have lived under the mullahs jackbooted rule for far too damn long.
Is the strait open for all eternity or closed forever? Is Iran dictating the traffic and demanding tolls or has nary a single ship made it past the American blockade or been filled with oil at an Iranian seaport since the blockade began? Does Iran still possess the ability to attack ships in the strait and levy toll fees on them, or is it an utterly destroyed non-entity at this point? The truth, of course, almost certainly lies somewhere in between those characterizations.
I, for one, would love to see this war wrapped up … as long as our terms are fully met. The problem, as I and others have stated before, is that nothing the Iranians in power say or agree to, whoever they may be at the moment, can ever be trusted. Ever. No ceasefire. No truce. No pact. No promise. No solemn vow. Radical Islamists will always use these peace instruments to their advantage.
By ignoring all the bright thinkers and conventional analyses the President’s genius strategy has placed us in the driver’s seat. We are now the world’s top source of oil and gas and control major distribution flows of petro supplies from around the world.
Despite the best efforts of those who would utilize the preposterous climate change scare to control us and depopulate the world, petroleum still rules world economies. About 80% of all world energy is petro-based -- it fuels industrial and agricultural production along with transportation. Constricting supplies causes all prices to rise -- the inflationary effects are well-known (except perhaps to the bright thinkers promoting net zero policies, which are tanking their economies and immiserating their citizens).
For this reason, foreign policy strategists, media pundits, and governments who listened to them for decades avoided attacking Iran, fearing worldwide disruption of a critical supply. Yet at the moment, by ignoring all these bright thinkers and conventional analyses, the President’s genius strategy has placed us in the driver’s seat. We are now the world’s top source of oil and gas and control major distribution flows of petro supplies from around the world.
The U.S. is an absolute energy monster * Sitting on 46 billion barrels of proved crude reserves (60% still locked in tight rock) * Permian Basin alone pumps 6.6 million barrels/day, more than every OPEC country except Saudi * Total U.S. crude: 13.6M barrels/day, the world’s #1 producer, beating Russia (9.1M) and Saudi (9.3M) * Natural gas? Not even close, record 43.2 trillion cubic feet in 2025, about 25% of global supply. The U.S. out-produces every petrostate on the planet. -- @hedgeye
We also control the sale and transportation of oil from Venezuela, which holds 17% of all the world’s known oil reserves. Maduro used to provide this free or cheaply to Cuba and China. Now it goes at market prices for the benefit of Venezuelans and to U.S.-approved channels.
Not only do we sit on a sea of oil and gas and control Venezuela’s output, too, but we also control the distribution of other sources around the world.
This past week, as we were mopping up the war in Iran, we signed a defense agreement with Morocco. This means we now control four major maritime checkpoints for petroleum transportation.
Translated from Chinese. The United States signed a defense agreement with Morocco yesterday, which concerns the Strait of Gibraltar (the gateway between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic). Thus, in just over a year, the United States has fully controlled the world's four major maritime chokepoints: Gibraltar Malacca Hormuz Panama I don't need to spell it out -- everyone can see this is a carefully orchestrated strategy, and it feels a bit more reliable than the Belt and Road Initiative.[/quote]
In case of war -- for example a Chinese attack on Taiwan -- the U.S. can embargo a significant portion of the world’s energy mix. At the moment both Russia and Chinese strategists must be revising their expansionist policies in light of these developments.
Like the barnyard colleagues of the Little Red Hen, European leaders are likely to try to jockey themselves into position to regain some control over the Strait of Hormuz. Victor Davis Hanson explains why like the little hen, we opened the Strait and we should alone enjoy the product of our labors:
I think now that all the heavy lifting has been done and Iran is flat on its back, you’re going to see all these opportunistic, carrion actors come in. You’re going to see the UN say, ‘Well, we’re going to be in charge of the peace,’ or you’re going to see people say, ‘This is what we’re going to do with Lebanon,’ or individual European states, or the EU, or NATO. But none of them were to be found when it was very unpopular, very risky, and Iran had this reputation -- unfounded, I think -- but it was the terror of the Middle East. We were told it was indomitable. For 47 years, you might want to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, but you don’t go near Iran. They’re too crazy. They’re too dangerous. And Donald Trump, in less than six weeks, with the help of the Israeli Air Force, demolished it. And now all of a sudden, everybody wants to pile on and think that they’re somehow responsible for the future of the new Middle East. It’s really shameless. It really is.”
Davis also provides the finest account of how Trump vanquished Iran in five weeks, where, for 47 years, it was believed to be an impossibility.
(Here is the briefest summary. You really should read it all.)
We’ve never taken on a country of 93 million people that had the most fearsome, terrible reputation of being dangerous and unpredictable, and running the Middle East with a ring of fire proxies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, indomitable.
They had terrified seven presidents. And yet in five weeks, we destroyed its ability to make war.
We found the tunnels, hidden airfields, and silos, and eliminated them.
Iran walked right, put their head right into a noose. They said, we’re gonna shut down the Strait of Hormuz, only us can determine who gets in and who gets out, and they have to be pro-Iranian. And we’re not gonna let Gulf states sell oil. Ha ha ha. We’re gonna -- and everybody said, oh, that was brilliant.
The Left went crazy. It was delighted. Oh my gosh. The Pentagon was caught on unprepared… The Pentagon had been preparing that for 50 years. Under Reagan, they opened it. They know how to do it. So, all that Trump said is that’s a good idea. Shut down the strait. And let in the good guys and stop the bad guys.
But your bad guys are our good guys. And your good guys are our bad guys. So, we’re gonna take a page outta your book, and we’re not gonna let in anybody anywhere near Iran, and we’re gonna let in everybody else. And the difference between the strategies is not just that we flipped it, but you have no wherewithal. PT boats and a bunch of mines won’t stop us, but we have a huge fleet. And that will stop you from stopping us. And if you decide that you wanna send the remnants of your missiles into the Gulf or Israel, or at our fleet, go ahead. [snip] And what was the result of all that in the last 48 hours? Ships are coming in that we let, and ships are not coming in, that we don’t let, and people, economists at the major research universities in Europe, the United States, have now flipped on a dime and they’re actually looking in empirical fashion, at last, at what this means. And the ranges are absolutely stunning. $400 million, and more, per day lost economically to Iran, whether that’s lack of oil sales or petrochemical sales, or lack of key imported mechanical goods, electrical goods that keep their infrastructure running, or food. They’re in dire straits.
They’re losing all of their income from the Strait of Hormuz and they’re losing all of their income from the petrochemical and oil. And they were broke to begin with, and they can’t do anything about it because Trump did it sequentially. Military, first, chance of negotiation, second, put the boot on the neck, third.
Unconditional surrender remains their only option now, as we have made clear.
Secretary of State Mark Rubio has flown to Cuba, and I anticipate this will result in a negotiated settlement freeing the citizens of Cuba, as we freed the citizens of Venezuela and are likely to soon free them in Iran.
If all this is not exciting enough for you, it looks like the Russiagate prosecutions are about to begin.
Source confirms to me that Joe diGenova will be sworn in on Monday as Counsel to the Attorney General to lead the Russia collusion hoax investigation. He will work out of the Fort Pierce, FLA courthouse; a grand jury has been empaneled there since January. This is the home of Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over Special Counsel Jack Smith's documents case against the president until she determined in July 2024 that his appointment violated the Constitution and tossed the indictment.
I expect this means the grand jury has completed its work, and indictments and trials are about to begin. If the media is not embarrassed enough by its ridiculous coverage of the Iran war, predicting as it did great loss of American life and a lengthy war, wait till you see whatever shred of credibility it retains after these trials are concluded, when they all fell for the Russiagate ruse.
I never liked this Worthless Piece of Crap. He accused Trump of everything he was involved in
He hid a seriously disturbed moral compass behind his shield of virtue signaling.
It’s hard to fathom how fast now-former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s star has faded. One moment he was the leading contender to be the governor of America’s largest state; the next, he had ended his gubernatorial campaign and resigned his congressional seat in disgrace.
After former Vice President Kamala Harris passed on running for California governor, a thoroughly uninspiring field of Democratic candidates seeking the office sprung up. However, California’s unique primary system meant that Democrats had to rally around somebody, and Swalwell seemed to be the guy.
Under the state’s jungle primary system, the top two candidates advance to the general election regardless of party. Existing polling showed at least a plausible chance that, because Democrats were fractured so badly, those top two candidates could have been Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. For example, in a hypothetical scenario in which Hilton and Bianco both got 15 percent of the vote and seven Democrats took 10 percent each, the general election would be between the two Republicans, even though 70 percent of the electorate opted for Democratic candidates.
The Democratic establishment was therefore compelled to pick someone to make sure a Democrat made it into the top two. Swalwell seemed to be the least unacceptable option to disparate left -wing interest groups. Former Rep. Katie Porter? Too abrasive. Billionaire Tom Steyer? Too rich. Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra? San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan? Former Los Angles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa? Who are these people exactly?
Therefore, Swalwell seemed like the default choice. While he had a national profile from his high-profile advocacy against President Donald Trump, his abortive 2020 presidential campaign, and his associations with a Chinese spy, Politico reported that early on, Swalwell “was essentially a stranger in California’s political circles.” However, “as he courted political insiders, Swalwell’s blank slate became the pitch. People could see what they wanted to see — to progressive labor unions, he was an anti-Trump warrior, to business groups, he was a moderate ex-prosecutor. His campaign strategists would acknowledge to lobbyists he was light on policy, but argued that just meant he was still malleable.”
Of course, to say that it was too good to be true would be a massive understatement. The San Francisco Chronicle reported allegations of sexual misconduct, up to and including rape, against him. More allegations would follow in the subsequent days. According to another report from Politico, Swalwell had a reputation in political circles as a sex pest that was something of an open secret around D.C. Swalwell has denied all wrongdoing in relation to the allegations.
The reaction was immediate. Supporters raced to rescind their endorsements. Former allies castigated Swalwell in the harshest terms. Lest you feel any pangs of sympathy that the Democrat might have been railroaded, remember that Swalwell himself spoke against due process rights, both for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and for students accused of wrongdoing on college campuses. It doesn’t seem fair to extend to Swalwell the benefit of the doubt that he denied to others.
Furthermore, there’s a recognizable personality archetype here. Current California Gov. Gavin Newsom faced ridicule several weeks ago for comparing himself to Patrick Bateman, the serial killer and main character of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho. While Bateman is the subject of a lot of memes and “media literacy” discourse from liberals who believe the story is a critique of the Right, it’s a bit more complicated than that. After all, it’s hard to read author Bret Easton Ellis’s views on feminism and political correctness and come away seeing him as a man of the Left. Bateman expressly uses liberal platitudes as a cover for his darker nature.
“Well, we have to end apartheid for one,” he says at one point in the film. “And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.”
Of course, Bateman doesn’t really believe any of that tripe. He’s just staying it to keep a respectable public persona and continue indulging his own impulses. While there (probably) aren’t any serial killers in Congress, that archetype is far too common in the real world. Don’t get me wrong: Newsom very much looks the part of Bateman. But it’s Eric Swalwell who seems to hide a seriously disturbed moral compass behind his shield of virtue signaling.
